GOSPEL IN PAGAN 
RELIGIONS 



IP" 



ship 





.■; . : 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

■BiH^ H . 

dffnp, 2 SnptjrigljJ !$<?.-! 

Shelf. 




THE GOSPEL 
IN PAGAN RELIGIONS: 

Some Thoughts Suggested by the 
World's Parliament of Religions 

TO 

AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN 



* H* IovSat(ov 6 Oeos /xovov ; ov^l /cat iOvo)v ; Nat kol 
Z6vuv. — St. Paul. 

Nulla falsa doctrina est, quae nort aliquid veri 
permisceat. — St. Augustine. 







Ij&f/J 



BOSTON 
ARENA PUBLISHING COMPANY 

Copley Square 
1894 






Copyrighted, 1894, 
By the Arena Publishing Co, 



All rights reserved. 



CONTENTS 



PEEFACE 

. CHAPTER I. 
The Gospel according to Jesus . . 3 

CHAPTER II. 

The Gospel Condition of Salvation . 28 

CHAPTER III. 
The Gospel in Pagan Religions . 57 

CHAPTER IV. 
A Saviour the Desire of All Nations, 85 

CHAPTER V. 

The Cause of Christian Missions . 123 



PEEFACE. 



The Gospel — from Godspell, meaning God's 
Word— is good news to men, because it tells them 
how they may be saved. It is the power of God unto 
salvation to every one who believes. Man's faith in 
God's Word is the condition of his salvation. But 
God's Word is not confined within the articles of 
Christian creeds, nor limited by the boundaries of 
church organizations. God speaks in some way to 
all men; hence, St. Paul saith to every man of the 
race, " The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, 
and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith which we 
preach." Hence, the gospel, as a saving power, is to 
be found in pagan religions. God sends into every 
nation and to every tribe, those " that preach the gos- 
pel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things." 
This seems to be the doctrine of St. Paul, who says: 
" So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by 
the word of God. But I say, Have they not heard ? 
Yes, verily, their sound went into all the earth, and 
their words unto the ends of the world." Thus, as 
he also saith in another place, " The grace of God, 
which bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all 



\ 



iv PEE FACE. 



men." Hence we believe and teach that multitudes in 
all nations of the earth, and in all ages of the world, 
are saved without ever knowing the creeds of Chris- 
tendom. St. Peter in the full conviction of this truth 
opened his mouth and said, "Of a truth I perceive 
that God is no respecter of persons; but in every na- 
tion he that feareth him and worketh righteousness, 
is accepted of him." 

But how can this doctrine be made to fall into ac- 
cord with another declaration of St. Peter's, wherein 
he claims that there is no salvation for men except 
through Jesus Christ of Nazareth — "For there is 
none other name under heaven, given among men, 
whereby we must be saved " ? There is but one 
way — the door of mercy opened by the Lord Jesus 
Christ — through which God can save sinful men; 
but men may come to this door of salvation along dif- 
ferent paths, all converging to it from different di- 
rections. The name of Christ, as the power of God 
unto salvation, does not stand for the pronunciation of 
a given collection of letters in any language, but for 
the great fact that " God so loved the world that he 
gave his only begotton Son, that whosoever belie veth 
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." 
This vital truth, divine mercy unto human salvation, 
is the undeveloped Godspell that is woven, as a thread 
of life, in all pagan religions; and through this di- 
vine mercy, multitudes may be saved without know- 



PREFACE. 



ing the historical name of him through whom human 
salvation is made possible. There is back of all the 
great ethnic religions the universal religion which in- 
fuses into them all a soul-saving stream of the water 
of life. If God is the Father of all men, there must 
be a way in which he saves all who cry unto him for 
mercy, by whatever name they call him, and out of 
whatever depth of darkness they cry. He can be just 
only by being equally merciful to all. If he saves 
any, he must put salvation within the reach of all. 
This is not the doctrine of universal salvation, but of 
the universal opportunity of being saved. Christ is 
the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world. Faith unto salvation is the soul fol- 
lowing this light, and the faith required of each is 
graded by the proportion of light given. Thus every 
man has an equal opportunity of being saved, and 
God is just toward all because he is equally merciful 
toward each. 

The late Kev. Dr. Guthrie of Scotland, of whose or- 
thodoxy and evangelical faith there has never been 
even so much as a suspicion, says: " St. John uses a 
very broad expression. ' Jesus Christ,' he says, ' is 
the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, 
out also for the sins of the whole world.'' ' The whole 
world ! ' 'Ah! ' some would say, 'that is dangerous 
language.' It is God's language — John speaking as 
he was moved by the Holy Ghost. It throws a zone of 



PREFACE. 



mercy around the world. Perish the hand that would 
narrow it by a hair's breadth." 

With this declaration of the most orthodox and 
evangelical of Christian preachers the following words 
of the Hindu, Swami Vivekananda, fall into sweetest 
accord. He says: " The same light shines through all 
colors, and in the heart of everything the same truth 
reigns. The Lord hath declared to the Hindu in his 
incarnation as Krishna, ' I am in every religion as the 
thread through a string of pearls, and wherever thou 
seest extraordinary holiness, and extraordinary power, 
raising and purifying humanity, know ye that I am 
there.'" 

This book has been written, and it is now sent forth 
to the world, in the spirit of the words of the Kev. 
Dr. John Henry Barrows, under whose large-hearted 
sympathies and broad-minded views the Columbian 
Parliament of the World's Keligions was assembled 
and successfully conducted; he says: " It is perfectly 
evident to all illuminated minds that we should cherish 
loving thoughts of all people, and humane views of all 
the great and lasting religions, and whoever would ad- 
vance the cause of his own faith, must discover and 
gratefully acknowledge the truths contained in other 
faiths." 

As intimated on the title-page, the thoughts con- 
tained in this volume were suggested to the author, 
who is an orthodox Christian, by the World's Parlia- 



PREFACE. 



ment of Keligions, in which Christians and Pagans sat 
together as brethren and talked peacefully and sweetly 
with one another about their different systems of 
religion. From this unique and most significant par- 
liament of all religions, being at once ecumenical and 
irenical, Pagans have gone back to their temples with 
a truer knowledge of Christianity, and Christians have 
come back to their churches with more correct views 
and a higher respect for the beliefs and sentiments of 
many forms of Paganism. 

It was something new under the sun for Christians, 
Jews, Mohammedans and Pagans to take counsel with 
one another about their respective forms of religion, 
and to worship together. This was rendered possible 
by the world-converting power of Christianity, which 
is gradually bringing unto men a new heaven and a 
new earth. The unique assembly was held in the tem- 
ple of Christianity and under the protecting shadow 
of a Christian government. 

The thought of it was so bold, the fact of it was so 
successful, and the fruit of it is proving to be so 
precious and profitable, that we cannot help seeing in 
it the finger of God. There was a divine inspiration 
in the mind that conceived it, and there was the guid- 
ance of a divine providence over the minds that called 
it together and controlled it while in session, making 
of it such a wonderful phenomenon that the whole 



PREFACE. 



world was filled with surprise, and is yet filled with 
admiration. 

It was a spectacle never before witnessed in the 
history of the world, at which men gazed with aston- 
ishment, and on which, no doubt, the angels looked 
with wonder and delight. No doubt the benediction 
of Jehovah will rest upon the always abiding and 
ever-expanding influences of that first ecumenical 
council of all Christian and Pagan religions, making 
them more and more conducive to the discovery and 
establishment of the universal truths of religion, 
throughout all nations and down all the ages to come. 
We can now see, more clearly than before, that Lady 
Somerset was not mistaken in what she wrote to Kev. 
Dr. Barrows in anticipation of the meeting of the 
council : — 

" Christianity has from it everything to hope; for 
as the plains, the table lands, the foothills, the moun- 
tain ranges, all conduct alike, slowly ascending to the 
loftiest peak o^ the Himalayas, so do all views of God 
tend toward and culminate in the character, the life 
and work of him who said, ' And I, if I be lifted up, 
will draw all men unto me.' " 

It is now generally conceded that there is at bottom 
in all the great ethnic religions, a desire, consciously 
expressed or unconsciously implied, for a divine 
Saviour — for a human Deliverer who, while being 
human, is yet more than human. On this point the 



PREFACE. 



Rt. Kev. John J. Keane, one of the ablest and most 
influential members of the Parliament, read a care- 
fully prepared paper, in which he said: — ■ 

"All humanity points back to a golden age, when 
man was taught of the Divine by the Divine, that, in 
that knowledge, he might know why he himself ex- 
isted, and how his life was to be shaped. Curiously, 
strangely, sadly as that primitive teaching of man by 
his Creator has been transformed in the lapse of ages, 
in the vicissitudes of distant wanderings, of varying 
fortunes and of changing culture, still the comparative 
study of ancient religions shows that, in them all, 
there has existed one central, pivotal concept, dressed, 
indeed, in various garbs of myth and legend and 
philosophy, yet ever recognizably the same — the 
concept of the fallen race of man and of a future 
Restorer — a Deliverer and Redeemer who, being 
human, should yet be different from and above the 
merely human." 

The same high authority, reviewing, from the high- 
est standpoint of Christian observation, the result of 
the Parliament to see what it has taught us, said in a 
closing address: — 

"While listening to utterances which we could not 
but approve and applaud, though coming from sources 
so diverse, we have had practical, experimental evi- 
dence of the old saying that there is truth in all reli- 
gions. . . . And, therefore, we have seen how true it 



P BEE ACE. 



is that religion is a reality back of all religions. Re- 
ligions are orderly or disorderly systems for the attain- 
ment of this great end — the union of man with 
God. . . . 

" The Parliament has shown that all the attempts 
of the tribes of earth to recall and set forth God's 
teaching, all their endeavors to tell of the means pro- 
vided by the Almighty God for uniting man with him- 
self, logically and historically lead up to and culminate 
in Jesus Christ. We have seen that all the great 
religious leaders of the world declared themselves 
gropers in the dark, pointing on toward the fulness 
of the light, or conscious precursors and prophets of 
him who was to be the Light of the World. . . . The 
world's longing for the truth points to him who brings 
in its fulness ; the world's sad wail over the wretched- 
ness of sin points, not to the despairing escape from 
the thralls of humanity, but to humanity as cleansed 
and uplifted and restored in redemption. The world's 
craving for union with the Divine finds its archetypal, 
glorious realization in the Divine Incarnation ; and to 
share in that wondrous union all are called as branches 
of the mystical Vine, members of the mystical Boyd, 
which lifts humanity above its natural state and pours 
into it the life of love." 

It is in this sense that we teach that the Gospel is 
contained, more or less clearly, in Pagan religions, 
holding that all systems of religion, whether Christian 



P BE FACE. 



or Pagan, which rest the hope of human salvation on 
God's mercy for sinners, contain the vital and saving 
power of the gospel, however its brightness may be 
dimmed under a cloud of erroneous doctrines, or 
its power diminished under a mass of superstitious 
practices. 

"We believe and teach that all systems of religion 
that lead the soul to the mercy of a sin-pardoning 
God, are good, in the sense that they are efficient unto 
the salvation of all who are, by them, led to trust in 
divine mercy. Yet we do not hold nor teach that all 
are equally good. Among the good some are better 
than others, and one, Christianity, is best of all, be- 
cause in it there is no shadow of darkness clouding 
the light of life. The Author. 



THE GOSPEL ACCOKDLN'G TO JESUS. 



" God so loved the world, that he gave his only be- 
gotten Son, that whosoever belie veth in him should 
not perish, but have everlasting life." — Jesus to 

KlCODEMUS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS. 

Godspell, euphuized into our word gospel, 
means God's word ; and God's word to man is 
good news because it tells him how he may be 
saved from sin and misery. The Gospel is 
God's message of mercy to sinners, and it is 
found in all creeds in which God speaks and 
reveals the divine way of human salvation. 
But the divine word in many creeds is be- 
clouded by a mass of human error and super- 
stition which men have woven around it. 
In this darkened condition Jesus found the 
Gospel when he came to earth. He rescued 
it from the traditions and doctrines of men 
and presented it to the world in its noonday 
brightness. Since his day, even in Christian 



4 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

creeds, the light of the Gospel has oftentimes 
been darkened by clouds of» human errors 
gathering over it. The Gospel in its purity 
is not the Gospel according to any given 
creed, but the Gospel according to Jesus — 
the Gospel as Jesus preached it. This is to 
be found, not in all that Jesus said while on 
earth, but in his answer to the question, 
" What must a man do in order to be saved?" 
Whatever creed, Christian or pagan, contains 
the vital substance of this answer, has in it, 
however mixed with error it may be, the Gos- 
pel of human salvation. 

Do we now possess the Gospel according to 
Jesus in its original purity and simplicity? 
Can we now separate it from all human ad- 
denda and admixtures ? The ready answer, 
with which most people are easily satisfied, is, 
We have the Gospel of Jesus in the New Tes- 
tament, especially in the four gospels according 
to the evangelists. But in those writings do 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS. 5 

we have the Gospel of Jesus just as he 
preached it, unmixed with any human addi- 
tions and elements whatsoever? We have the 
Gospel according to Matthew, according to 
Mark, according to Luke, and according to 
John; but, after all, do we have the Gospel 
according to Jesus himself ? We want to find 
just what Jesus, when he preached his Gospel 
to the world, laid down as the condition of 
human salvation. This, no doubt, is contained 
in the gospels of the New Testament, but they 
also contain much more than this — much 
which is not essential for men to know and 
believe in order to their salvation. A man 
may be saved without reading, or even know- 
ing, all that is contained in the gospels accord- 
ing to the four evangelists. The Gospel ac- 
cording to Jesus is the simple truth which he 
proclaimed as the essential condition of salva- 
tion. ' Can we now find that simple truth, and 
separate it from everything else ? 



6 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

The Greek grammarians tell us that the pre- 
position Kara — according to — carries in it the 
primary idea of down from a higher to a lower 
level. When the reference is to an author it 
means that his words are to be received accord- 
ing to his capacity to understand and his au- 
thority to speak. The Gospel according to 
Matthew is the Gospel of Jesus according to 
Matthew's capacity to comprehend it, and his 
authority to declare it. And so of the gospels 
according to the other evangelists. But were 
they not inspired to understand the Gospel just 
as Jesus understood it, and to present it to their 
readers just as he preached it to his hearers ? 
But, granting their inspiration in the highest 
sense ever demanded, yet we do not have in 
their gospels the Gospel according to Jesus, 
pure and simple. Their gospels contain his- 
tories, narratives and conversations, all of which 
are important as unfolding and illustrating the 
Gospel as Jesus preached it, but are not essen- 



THE GOSPEL AC COBBING TO JESUS. 1 

tial to the Gospel itself. The Gospel of Jesus 
is contained in their gospels as a soul of divine 
thought breathed into a body of human words. 
Can we penetrate through the body of their 
words and seize upon the divine evangel as 
Jesus preached it, laying down the condition of 
human salvation ? Can we extract the Gospel 
itself from the gospel narratives, and separate it 
from all admixtures ? 

In order to do this we must first separate the 
words of Jesus from the words of the narrators, 
and then we must make a division in the very 
words of Jesus themselves. In the very words 
of Jesus we must separate the words in which 
he declares the divine way of human salvation, 
from those in which he teaches the saved ones, 
after being saved, what they should believe and 
do. In the very words of Jesus we have much 
more than his Gospel; we have the doctrines on 
which the Gospel rests, the precepts which he 
taught his disciples as rules of conduct, and the 



8 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

promises which he gave them to support and 
comfort them in the trials and temptations of 
life, and in the face of death itself. All these 
words belong to the Gospel, but they are not of 
its essence. We are apt to overlook this dis- 
tinction. We must seek in the very words of 
Jesus for his Gospel pure and simple — just as 
he preached it to the world. We are to take 
only those very words of Jesus which answer 
the question, What must one do in order to be 
saved ? and in them, when separated from all 
touch and tinge given to them by the circum- 
stances of the narrative, we find the Gospel 
according to Jesus. In the declaration of the 
divine condition of human salvation Jesus is 
the contemporary of all ages, and his Gospel 
is equally applicable to all races, to all genera- 
tions, and to all sorts and conditions of 
men. 

In the gospels of the evangelists we do not 
have four gospels, but one Gospel as it pre- 



■i 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS. 9 

sented itself to the minds of four different 
writers; and we must also bear in mind that 
the evangelists did not write their gospels until 
several years after the departure of Jesus from 
the earth ; and, when written, they were com- 
posed for the information of the disciples of 
Jesus, rather than for the purpose of presenting 
the Gospel of Jesus to the world. 

In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke 
the Gospel according to Jesus is given only in 
parables; that is, their narratives are filled with 
histories and instructions addressed to believers, 
and do not, except in parables, lay down the 
condition of human salvation as preached by 
Jesus to the world. But John, who stood 
nearer to Jesus in personal love than any other, 
was moved by an inward impulse to give the 
Gospel according to Jesus Himself in the pure 
and simple words in which Jesus spoke it to 
Nicodemus. In that conversation Jesus laid 
down the divine condition of human salvation, 



10 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS, 

and in speaking to Nicodemus he speaks to 
every sinner of the race. He unfolds the Gos- 
pel in its divine motive and in its human con- 
dition : " God so loved the world, that he 
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." 

This is the Gospel according to Jesus, con- 
densed in a single sentence. This is the dia- 
mond text of the whole Bible, because, like the 
diamond, it contains the greatest possible 
amount of wealth in the smallest possible com- 
pass. The whole Gospel, the divine way of 
human salvation, is compressed and crystallized 
in these few words. This text is set in the 
heart of Jesus, and it shines through the dark- 
ness of the world like a diamond sparkling in 
the night. In its light we see the world lost 
in sin and at the point of perishing. We see 
God in infinite love yearning for the lost world, 
and giving his only begotten Son, that whoso- 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS. 11 

ever of the lost race believeth in Him, should 
not perish, but have eternal life. This is all, 
but this is everything. It reveals the divine 
way if human salvation in a statement as sim- 
ple as the words of a child, and as sublime as 
the thoughts of God. The provision is univer- 
sal ; it is for the whole world. The offer is 
universal; it is to every one in the world. 
Whosoever! There can be no wider word 
than this ; it means all and each. Whoso- 
ever believeth in him, who comes forth out 
of the bosom of God's infinite love and preaches 
this Gospel to the world of sinners, shall be 
saved. This is the Gospel according to Jesus. 
There is no creed to be learned ; only a great 
fact to be believed. God in his infinite love 
offers eternal life through Jesus to sinners 
perishing in sin; man hears this good news and 
believes it; his soul is saved. Luke gives the 
Gospel according to Jesus as he spoke it in 
parables. When all the publicans and sinners 



12 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN BELIGIONS. 

drew near to hear him, he spake this par- 
able unto them : — 

" What man of you, having an hundred sheep, 
if he lose one of them, doth not leave the 
ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after 
that which is lost, until he find it? And when 
he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulder, 
rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he 
calleth together his friends and neighbors, say- 
ing unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have 
found my sheep which was lost. 

" I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in 
heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more 
than over ninety and nine just persons, which 
need no repentance. 

" Either what woman having ten pieces of 
silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a 
candle, and sweep the house, and seek dili- 
gently till she find it. And when she hath 
found it, she calleth her friends and neighbors 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS. 13 

together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have 
found the piece which I had lost. 

" Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the 
presence of the angels of God over one sinner 
that repenteth." 

We do not have here two parables, but one 
parable in two parts, showing how God in in- 
finite love comes forth, in the person of his 
only begotten Son, the Good Shepherd, seeking 
lost sinners to save them, and how he and all 
heaven with him rejoice in the salvation of 
men. This is the Gospel according to Jesus — 
the good news that he brought into the world. 
It is misleading to name this passage the para- 
ble of the lost sheep and of the lost piece of 
money. It is the parable of the Good Shepherd 
seeking his lost sheep, and of the good woman 
seeking her lost piece of silver. In all other 
religions men are seeking for a lost God, but, in 
the Gospel of Jesus, God comes forth seeking 
for lost men. Perhaps our world is the only 



14 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

fallen world in the universe. Who knows? 
It may be the one lost sheep from all the 
millions that fill the boundless fields of space 
around the eternal throne. God so loves this 
world — this one lost sheep — that he gave 
his only begotten Son for its redemption, and 
comes forth in his person, the great and glo- 
rious Shepherd whose millions of bright sheep 
fill the universe, leaving the other millions 
safely adjusted in their spheres, to seek this 
one which needs his care, and which without 
his care would utterly perish, his boundless 
love prompting him to go after it. 

This parable presents the divine side of hu- 
man redemption. It is immediately followed 
by another which presents the human side. 

"And he said, A certain man had two sons; 
and the younger of them said to his father, 
Father, give me the portion of goods that 
falleth to me. And he divided unto them his 
living. And not many days after the younger 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS. 15 

son gathered all together, and took his journey 
into a far country, and there wasted his sub- 
stance with riotous living. And when he had 
spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that 
land : and he began to be in want. And he 
went and joined himself to a citizen of that 
country; and he sent him into his fields to feed 
swine. And he would fain have filled his 
belly with the husks that the swine did eat : 
and no man gave unto him. 

"And when he came to himself, he said, 
How many hired servants of my father's have 
bread enough and to spare, and I perish with 
hunger. I will arise and go to my father, and 
will say unto him, Father, I have sinned 
against heaven and before thee, and am no 
more worthy to be called thy son: make me as 
one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and 
came to his father. 

" But when he was yet a great way off, his 
father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, 



16 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the 
son said unto him, Father, I have sinned 
against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no 
more worthy to be called thy son. But the 
father said to his servants, Bring forth the best 
robe, and pat a ring on his hand, and shoes on 
his feet; and bring hither the fatted calf, and 
kill it; and let us eat, and be merry; for this 
my son was dead, and is alive again: he was 
lost, and is found. And they began to be 
merry." 

This is the human side of the Gospel accord- 
ing to Jesus. Here we find man despairing of 
self and seeking God. He spontaneously re- 
pents and returns. As one has said, " Never 
man spake like this man; and nowhere else has 
even this man spoken more fully or more win- 
somely of man's need and God's mercy. Both 
the departure and the return — both the fall 
and the rising again, are depicted here. This 
parable sweeps the whole horizon of time from 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS. 17 

the unfallen state at first to the glory that shall 
at last be revealed. The way is laid open with 
marvellous precision from the lowest state of 
sin and misery to a heavenly Father's heart and 
home." Here the gate of salvation is flung 
wide open, and no man can shut it. 

There is here a voice at once human and 
divine, clear and ringing — a voice that repeats 
itself and resounds down all the ages, and 
which the din and roar of the world can never 
drown, proclaiming the gospel — the good news 
of God's love and mercy unto salvation — to 
the lowest, to the deepest fallen, to the farthest 
outcast, and to the latest generation. It tells 
us that God is our Father and that he loves his 
children even when most rebellious and most 
unworthy, and that heaven is our home and 
that our Father wants all his children to come 
home and live with him ; and that he runs out 
to meet and to welcome to his heart and home 
the returning sinner with joy and gladness and 



18 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

a feast of rejoicing. Whosoever will may come, 
and he that cometh shall in no wise be rejected. 
The father does not meet the son with a creed 
in his hand to which he must subscribe before 
he can be restored to a son's place ; there is no 
word said about the need of an atonement to 
propitiate the father, nor of repentance to qual- 
ify the son anew for the father's love. The 
father saw his returning son " when he was yet 
a great way off, and had compassion, and ran, 
and fell on his neck, and kissed him." In that 
kiss the past was blotted out, and the father 
and son were in each other's arms in parental 
and filial love, just as if the son had never 
wandered away from the father's home. This 
is, as Lange beautifully says, Ci a gospel within 
a gospel "; it is the Gospel according to Jesus 
— the good news of love and mercy, and of free 
forgiveness and joyful salvation for our lost 
world. We find this gospel of divine love seek- 
ing and saving sinful men like a chain of gold 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS. 19 

running through the four gospels according to 
the evangelists and all their other writings, 
and through the epistles of Paul and Peter and 
James, and shining out, like a diamond daz- 
zling in the dark, in a single verse in the epis- 
tle of Jude, where he exhorts those who come 
under its redeeming and saving power, — " Keep 
yourselves in the love of God, looking for the 
mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal 
life." 

In the gospels and epistles of the New Testa- 
ment there is much of the nature of doctrines 
and precepts, of explanation and instruction, 
of promises and warnings, which, though impor- 
tant in itself and in its place, is not essential to 
the Gospel as declaring the saving power of 
God to every one who believes ; all that portion 
of the volume of divine revelation belongs to 
the Gospel as setting forth the fundamental 
doctrines on which it rests and the holy duties 
which it enjoins upon those who are saved. 



20 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

When we tear open the New Testament and 
penetrate to its heart we find the Gospel ac- 
cording to Jesus, and we find in it a shorter 
Gospel and a larger Saviour than we do in the 
theologies of the Church which fail to distin 
guish between the Gospel of Christ and the 
creeds of Christianity. Millions are saved with- 
out knowing all the contents of the writings of 
the Evangelists and Apostles, because in those 
writings there is much that is not essential to 
salvation, though very important for the direc- 
tion and comfort of the Christian life of the 
saved ones. First the gospel, and then the 
creed. Preach the gospel as the condition of 
salvation, and thus make disciples of all na- 
tions; organize the disciples in a holy society, 
the kingdom of God on earth, by baptizing 
them in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost; then teach the 
disciples, when thus gathered out of the world 
and organized into churches, what they are to 



THE GOSPEL ACCOBDING TO JESUS. 21 

believe and do, even all things whatsoever Jesus 
has commanded in the gospels and epistles. 

This puts the creed last of all. Christianity 
is one in the gospel, but the churches are many 
in their creeds. The gospel unifies; creeds di- 
versify. In the creeds and theologies of the 
church the gospel is contained just as alcohol 
is contained in brandies and wines. In the 
best of wines and strongest of brandies there is 
only a certain percentage of the spirits of alco- 
hol, the largest portion consisting of water 
and flavoring ingredients. The life-giving ele- 
ment and saving power in all theologies and 
creeds is the Gospel according to Jesus ; but 
this vital and vitalizing principle is presented 
in formulated systems in which there is a large 
portion of doctrines and duties not essential to 
salvation, and, in too many, large admixtures of 
human addenda that tend to obscure its sim- 
plicity and to enfeeble its saving power. There 
is much even in the Bible which a man may 



22 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

not know, or knowing may misinterpret or 
ignore, and yet receive the essential truth of 
the gospel unto the salvation of his soul. The 
Gospel according to Jesus is the soul of the 
Bible in a body of biblical histories, prophecies, 
doctrines and precepts, and when the soul of 
man takes hold of the soul of the Bible, his 
soul shall be saved, however ignorant or misin- 
formed he may be about the bodily contents of 
the volume of divine revelation. 

As we have the Gospel according to Jesus in 
the four New Testament gospels, each accord- 
ing to its own author, so we have the Gospel 
according to Jesus in the multitudinous gospels 
according to the creeds of the many branches of 
the church; we have the Gospel according to 
Catholicism, according to Protestantism, and 
according to each of the endless schools of 
Catholic interpretation and according to each of 
the multitudinous denominations and branches 
of Protestant Christianity. In all these varied 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS. 23 

theologies, and more or less conflicting creeds, 
the Gospel according to Jesus is contained, but 
is hedged about by more or less of human ad- 
mixtures which Jesus never taught, and which 
man is not required to believe in order to the 
salvation of his soul. In many of the creeds 
there is much that is neither important in itself, 
nor in any way helpful to those who are inquir- 
ing for the way of life. The Gospel is God's 
Word, but men, theologizing, have invented 
the creeds. The Gospel never changes, but 
creeds both change and multiply. The Gospel, 
the divine condition of human salvation, can- 
not be revised; but creeds, the various human 
interpretations of the underlying doctrines of 
the divine Gospel, may be revised; many of 
them ought to be revised — some of them ought 
to be abolished. 

But a creed is necessary to the existence of 
the Church as an organized community in the 
world; and until all men can see and think 



24 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

alike there will be, there must be, a variety in 
the theologies and creeds of honest and con- 
scientious men. Creeds are essential to healthy 
and vigorous Christian life. The articles of a 
man's creed are the elements of his character. 
A church must have a creed as the basis of 
united Christian life and of harmonious Chris- 
tian activities. A church is contained in its 
creed just as a tree is contained in its bark, and 
the Gospel is contained in the church just as 
the moving sap of life is contained in the wood 
of the tree. Dead limbs ought to be cut off 
the live tree, and a dead tree ought to be cut 
down. The creed of a living church is only 
the bark on the tree of life. Creeds are indis- 
pensable, but they must not be promulgated as 
the condition of salvation; the Gospel alone 
is essential to salvation. It is the vital essence 
of spiritual life that circulates within the body 
of every living church. Creeds become hurtful, 
and even perilous to the life of the church, 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS. 25 

when they are preached as if they were the 
Gospel — the divine condition of human salva- 
tion. Preach the Gospel to the world, and 
teach creeds to the disciples gathered out of 
the world. The order of Jesus is, First make 
disciples, and then teach them. In some 
branches of the Church this rule has been re- 
versed. That, and that alone, is the reason- 
able ground of complaint against creeds. 

This exaltation of the creed above the gospel 
is carried in some branches of the church to 
such an extent that it is doubtful whether 
Jesus, if he should appear again on earth, veil- 
ing his divinity under his humanity, could ob- 
tain license at their hands to preach his own 
gospel; but few churches would now allow him 
to preach it again in all its simplicity and 
purity as he preached it to the poor when on 
earth. In some branches of his own church 
Jesus would not be received into membership, 
and in others he would be excluded from the 



26 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

holy sacraments unless he would receive them 
in the way prescribed by their creeds. The 
Gospel that is unto salvation is not the gospel 
according to men who make the creeds, but ac- 
cording to Jesus who has made the atonement. 



THT GOSPEL CONDITION OF SALVATION. 



There's a wideness in God's mercy, 
Like the wideness of the sea; 

There's a kindness in His justice, 
Which is more than liberty. 

There is welcome for the sinner, 
And more graces for the good; 

There is mercy with the Saviour; 
There is healing in His blood. 

For the love of God is broader 
Than the measure of man's mind; 

And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind. 

But we make His love too narrow 
By false limits of our own; 

And we magnify His strictness 
With a zeal He will not own. 

F. W. FABER, D. D. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE GOSPEL CONDITION OF SALVATION. 

The Gospel according to Jesus opens for 
guilty men the golden door of divine mercy; 
and whosoever will may enter by faith into the 
kingdom of divine love, and find salvation and 
rest in the assurance of hope. Human faith in 
divine mercy is the Gospel condition of salva- 
tion. Jesus teaches this glorious fact in the 
parable of the Pharisee and the publican. 

" Two men went up into the temple to pray; 
the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. 
The Pharisee stood and prayed this with him- 
self : God, I thank thee that I am not as other 
men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as 
this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give 
tithes of all I possess. And the publican, 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 29 

standing afar off, would not lift up so much as 
his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, 
saying, God be merciful to me the sinner." 

Concerning these two worshippers Jesus said, 
" I tell you, this man went down to his house 
justified rather than the other : for every one 
who exalte th himself shall be abased ; and he 
that humbleth himself shall be exalted." 

In this parable we have the sum and sub- 
stance of the gospel of Jesus as he himself 
preached it to the world and unfolded it to his 
disciples. A man conscious of his sin prays to 
God for mercy, and goes down to his house 
justified. That was all. There was no creed. 
There was simply an humble trust in the mercy 
of God, and the sinner was justified. " God be 
merciful to me the sinner." This is the whole 
gospel exhibited in the very act of saving a 
sinner. 

The Gospel in its essence is the divine pro- 
vision for mercy to sinners. But what is 



30 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

mercy? How can a just God be merciful to 
sinful men? These are lawful questions which 
men may discuss, provided, always, that they 
shall not attempt to enforce their exposition 
as creeds which men must accept before they 
can receive the mercy of God unto salvation. 
A creed every thinking man must have, but 
every man who really thinks for himself, will 
allow every other man to do the same for him- 
self. We want men strong in the faith ; but 
only strong creeds can produce strong charac- 
ters. Strong believers leave the door of divine 
mercy wide open for the weak in mind, and 
the ignorant in theology, to enter. They 
would not shut out the blind who feel their 
way to the door of God's mercy, nor the lame 
who come on crutches. 

But there is a doctrine that underlies and 
justifies the mercy of God towards sinful men, 
and for those who are strong enough to receive 
it, that doctrine should be developed. The 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 31 

Gospel is for the world, that sinners might be- 
come Christians ; and theology is for the church, 
that Christians might grow and become strong 
in the knowledge and grace of their salvation. 
We cannot demand too little of men for ad- 
mission into the kingdom of God, and we can- 
not require too much of those who have been 
admitted as disciples in the school where Jesus 
teaches. He is truth itself, and his disciples 
should be taught the truth as it is in Jesus, 
and made to see how it justifies the mercy of 
God's love for sinners. 

Then, what is mercy? Mercy, in the legal 
sense of the word, consists in providing good 
for the undeserving and in bestowing good 
upon the unworthy. Can God be merciful in 
this sense ? Justice demands that wrong shall 
be punished. Mercy consists in withholding 
deserved punishment, and in bestowing un- 
merited good upon wrong-doers. Can God do 
this ? How can God be merciful ? Mercy at 



32 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

the expense of justice would itself be a great 
injustice. The Judge of all the earth must do 
right. The guilt of sin not only renders the 
sinner liable to punishment, but also obligates 
the judge to enforce the penalty. Can God in 
justice be merciful to sinners, and remit the 
penalty which their sins deserve ? This is the 
problem that theology must solve. The solu- 
tion of this problem, when systematized, con- 
stitutes a creed. The solution which any man 
gives to the problem, is his personal creed. 
The solution which any church gives to this 
problem, is the creed of that church. A creed 
is a reasoned-out theory of religion. There are 
as many creeds as there are theories of religion 
among Christian reasoners. 

The Gospel is not a human philosophy, but a 
divine revelation, a great fact which God has 
made known to men; that great fact is the 
Gospel which Jesus preached to the world, that 
God has provided a way in which he is merci- 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 33 

ful to sinners. Whosoever believes this fact 
and rests upon it, shall be saved, whether or 
not he understands the doctrine that underlies 
it. Faith in God's mercy, and not soundness 
in theology, is the Gospel condition of salvation. 
The Gospel comes before the creed. The Gos- 
pel addresses itself to man's faith, the creed to 
his reason. The creed is the reason's interpre- 
tation of the doctrines of the divine revelation. 
The creed of the Gospel consists of the doc- 
trines of the New Testament revelation formu- 
lated by the human reason into a system of 
theology. Therefore a creed is the production 
of Christian thinkers. It comes after the gos- 
pel. The New Testament materials for a creed 
were not given until several years after Jesus 
had left the earth; and when given, they were 
given to those who were already believers. The 
gospels were written for the disciples, and all 
the epistles were addressed either to organized 
churches or to recognized believers. The New 



34 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

Testament revelation is based on the fact that 
the Gospel was already preached in the world, 
and believed by those to whom the revelation 
was addressed. 

The Old Testament Scriptures were trans- 
ferred to the New Testament believers as their 
inheritance from the old dispensation, but no- 
where was a knowledge of the Old Testament 
Scriptures required as a necessary condition of 
faith in the Gospel as Jesus preached it. Jesus 
on more occasions than one gave his testimony 
to the truth and authority of the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures, but he nowhere required faith 
in them as a condition of salvation through the 
Gospel which he preached. He proved to the 
Jews that his Gospel was a fulfilment of 
the promises and prophecies of their accepted 
Scriptures, and therefore they should acknowl- 
edge him and receive his gospel; but he never 
said even to them, You must believe in the 
Scriptures before you can believe in me. He 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 35 

said to church members, " Search the Scriptures, 
they are they which testify of me." The Scrip- 
tures of both the Old and New Testaments 
were given to the Church as a rule and guide 
of the faith and practice of believers, but not to 
the World as a creed which men must learn 
and believe before they can be saved through 
the divine provision for mercy to sinners. 
Then the creed, which human reason formu- 
lates from the Scriptures, comes after the gos- 
pel, and is for believers, and is not to be 
presented to the world for acceptance as a con- 
dition of human salvation. 

We proceed now to unfold the philosophy of 
divine grace, and to present our conception of 
the mercy of the gospel as the power of God, 
through his only begotten Son, unto salvation 
to every one who believes, to Jew and Gentile 
alike the world over, and throughout all genera- 
tions. The whole gospel, as we have seen, is 
both infolded and unfolded in the publican's 



36 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

prayer, " Gocl be merciful to me the sinner." 
Throughout the Scriptures God is represented 
to us as a God of mercy: " The earth is full of 
his mercy." " His mercy is great, above the 
heavens." " God is merciful, slow to anger 
and of great kindness." " The Lord is long- 
suffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity 
and transgression, and by no means clearing the 
guilty." The Bible is full and overflowing 
with the declarations of God's mercy towards 
sinful men. But there are more than a half 
dozen different words in the original Greek and 
Hebrew which are translated in our English 
Bible by the word mercy and its derivations. 
They do not all mean precisely the same thing; 
and this shows that our word mercy, which 
translates them all, must have a very unsettled 
and uncertain meaning. The word is used as 
being synonymous with sympathy, compassion, 
commiseration, kindness and pity. There is a 
Mndred ship between all these words. 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 3Y 

But mercy in the Gospel sense is to be found 
in the word which the publican used in his 
prayer — IXda-OrjTi- The fundamental idea in 
this word is that of propitiation. Propitiation 
implies that something has been done as a basis 
for the reconciliation of an offended person with 
the offender. Gospel mercy carries this idea in 
it. The word, then, is not derived from miser e- 
cordia — heart-misery with another — but from 
merces, meaning the wages or fine paid by a 
friend that a guilty one might go free from a 
merited penalty. In the case of a moral penalty 
can this be done ? This was the enigma for 
which the angels could not find the word. It 
is the problem which the Gospel of Jesus solves. 
Jesus himself is the solution. He gave himself 
and assumed a human life that he might be 
amerced for the sin of man. In other words, 
God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son in amercement for the sin of the 
world, and through the atonement thus made 



38 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

God has been propitiated to sinners. This is 
the divine provision for mercy to sinners. It is 
not a provision of mercy for sinners, but for 
mercy to sinners. It is not a provision that 
arises ont of the divine mercy, but a provision 
that renders it possible for a just God to be 
merciful to sinful men. This propitiation origi- 
nated in the love of God for sinners, but in the 
love of a just and holy God who must demand 
satisfaction for justice before he can be propi- 
tiated and show mercy to sinners. 

The law of justice has not been repealed nor 
for a moment suspended, but a provision for 
mercy has been made and added to the law of 
justice. By this provision mercy does not de- 
feat the ends of justice, but becomes possible 
because love has fulfilled them in the person 
and work of Jesus, who appeared on earth as 
" the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of 
the world." In this Gospel provision for mercy 
to sinners, mercy and truth have met together, 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 39 

and righteousness and peace have kissed each 
other. God is just while showing mercy to 
sinful man, and is righteous in receiving him 
in peace, and in granting him eternal life. 
The two pillars that support the triumphal 
arch of mercy are, on one side eternal justice, 
and on the other infinite love ; and between 
these two pillars, and under the world-spanning 
arch of divine mercy, guilty men may walk by 
faith into the realm of eternal life. Jesus 
saves. Whosoever believeth in him shall not 
perish, but shall have everlasting life. Here 
faith in divine mercy is laid down as the sole 
condition of salvation. 

But Jesus laid down other and harder con- 
ditions as the terms of acknowledged disciple- 
ship with him. One day when vast multitudes 
were following him, he turned and said unto 
them : " If any man come unto me, and hate not 
his father, and mother, and wife, and children, 
and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life 



40 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever 
doth not bear his cross, and come after me, can- 
not be my disciple." These words have a 
hard, metallic ring about them. They grate 
upon the ear like the clanking of the iron links 
of a chain which was to bind men's souls in 
bondage. They are not the words of the gos- 
pel of love which Jesus preached to the world, 
laying down the condition of salvation, but are 
the words of the Head of the Church laying 
down the terms of official discipleship with him 
in his work and sufferings. Jesus came into 
the world for the double purpose, first, of 
preaching the gospel of love to the world, that 
men might believe its good news and be saved ; 
and, second, of organizing of the saved ones the 
kingdom of God on earth, that through them, 
thus organized, he might redeem the whole 
world and deliver it from the dominion of sin 
and misery. The terms of full discipleship in 
the kingdom of God on earth were higher and 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 41 

harder than the condition of individual salva- 
tion. Hence in the primitive churches there 
were two classes of members, the fideles and the 
catechumeni; or, as we say in these modern 
days, the communicants and non-communicants. 
It was not held in ancient times that the non- 
communicants were in an unsaved state, but 
only that they were not prepared for full mem- 
ship in the visible church. Men are saved on 
the simple condition of faith, and are after- 
wards admitted to full discipleship on proof of 
their fidelity. There are also multitudes who 
have more or less distinctly heard the voice, or 
the echo, of the gospel, and, believing the good 
news, are saved on their undeveloped faith 
without being received into the church even as 
catechumens. They belong to the church in 
spirit but not by acknowledged discipleship ; 
and at the last day they will be found among 
the number of the saved, when it will be dis- 
covered that the invisible boundaries of Chris- 



4-2 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

tianity extended far beyond the limits of visible 
church organizations. 

There are secret disciples, and also a secret 
of discipleship. The secret of true disciple- 
ship, in or out of the church, is not easy to be 
defined, yet it is very real. It is indepen- 
dent of church membership, although indi- 
cated by the study of the lives of church 
members much more often than by that of the 
lives of others. It is even independent of the 
avowal of discipleship. That is to say, there 
are some who illustrate it but who do not con- 
sider themselves Christians as yet. It is inde- 
pendent of circumstances also. Social condi- 
tions, business fortunes or misfortunes, and 
differences of race, sex, language or age do 
not affect it. He who has discovered it rarely 
fails to reveal and receive credit for the dis- 
covery, even if he be but faintly conscious of 
his success. He who claims most loudly to 
have discovered it, almost invariably thereby 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 43 

raises a doubt of his success. Perhaps the 
nearest approach to a definition of it is made 
in speaking of it as the subordination of self to 
the divine will. To be a true disciple of Christ 
involves confessing him, obeying him, loving 
him supremely and all men for his sake, and 
bearing loyally the hostility of the world, what- 
ever its form. But the peculiarity which most 
promptly and signally separates a true disciple 
from others and attracts attention to him as 
such is selfsubordination, the waiting on God 
for orders. When we see one unostentatiously 
and genuinely treating himself as God's man, 
making no parade of his subordination, yet 
simply and habitually depending on his 
Heavenly Father for guidance, we rightly 
reckon him to have found and to be illustrating 
the secret of discipleship. 

Every one who is saved should become such 
a disciple, but we are not to think that no one 
can be saved unless he comes up to this stan- 



44 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

dard. Our present inquiry is not about the 
perfection and highest possible attainments of 
discipieship with Jesus, but about the Gospel 
condition of human salvation. What must a 
man do in order to be saved ? The Gospel an- 
swers, "Whosoever believeth in him shall not 
perish, but shall have eternal life." But what is 
it to believe in Jesus ? Is it to believe in a cer- 
tain doctrine concerning him ? Is it to believe 
in a certain S} T stem of theology which unfolds 
the plan of salvation as certain Christian thinkers 
have reasoned it out ? Is it to believe in a cer- 
tain creed which the church presents as its 
system of Gospel truth? It is none of these. 
It is simply to believe the Gospel which Jesus 
preached to the world — the good news that 
God has provided a way in which he is merciful 
to sinners, and to trust in that divine mercy 
for pardon and salvation. The publican smote 
upon his breast and prayed, " God be merciful 
to me the sinner." He went down to his house 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 45 

justified. It is a faith that springs out of the 
personal consciousness of sin, and trusts in the 
unexplained mercy of God for pardon and 
salvation. The more childlike and simple the 
faith of this trust is, the more powerful and 
purifying will be its influence on the life of 
him who thus believes unto salvation. The 
little child, conscious of having offended its 
mother, and knowing she loves it, goes to her 
in faith for the forgiveness of her love, with- 
out trying to understand the principle which 
prompts and justifies the forgiving love which 
it knows it does not deserve. It is the simple 
act of unquestioning trust that accepts an 
unmerited forgiveness, because -the love which 
forgives wipes out the sin that is forgiven. 
Such a faith, receiving the forgiveness of a 
loving mother, has a transforming influence in 
the life of the child, producing living and 
loving obedience. And such childlike faith 
of trust, springing out of the consciousness of 



46 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

sin and of God's mercy to sinners, is the 
Gospel condition of human salvation. 

In the first part of this chapter we have 
given our theory of the doctrine that underlies 
the Gospel which offers salvation on the simple 
condition of faith, but it is not necessary that 
our theory, or any other, should be received as 
a basis for faith in the mercy of God unto 
salvation. Thousands travel daily on our rail- 
roads who do not understand the mechanism 
and laws of steam navigation. They simply 
go aboard and trust in a system of travel and 
transportation, which they do not comprehend, 
because they believe it to be sufficiently safe. 
Thus millions are saved and borne to heaven 
by simply trusting in the mercy of God with- 
out comprehending the theology that underlies 
the divine way of human salvation. This is 
not theology, but it is practical and saving 
religion. In all this we do not mean to teach 
that theology and creeds are not useful, and 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 47 

very important in their proper places. Jesus 
taught theology to his disciples, especially to 
his twelve apostles. Perhaps Judas was as 
good a theologian as any one of them, but his 
theology did not save him. There is no saving 
power even in the soundest theology; but there 
is saving power in the feeblest faith, in the 
humble trust of faith even when the faith 
issues out of a very imperfect and erroneous 
creed. 

Jesus preached the Gospel to the world that 
men might believe in the mercy of God and be 
saved ; but when men believed, he gathered 
around him a school of disciples to whom he 
taught the theology of the divine provision 
which renders it possible for God to show 
mercy to sinners. Early in his ministry he 
went up into a mountain, and when he was set, 
according to the custom of teaching at his day, 
his disciples came unto him, and he opened his 
mouth and taught them the doctrines, laws and 



48 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

precepts of the kingdom of God which he was 
then establishing on earth. The Sermon on 
the Mount is the body of theology which Jesus 
gave his disciples. It is at once simple and 
sublime, and profound and practical from begin- 
ning to end. That sermon was spoken to his 
disciples, but in the hearing of the multitudes. 
It was given to the church in its incipient or- 
ganization, but it is not to be kept from the 
world. The people who heard him were as- 
tonished at his doctrine, not so much at what 
he taught as at the manner of his teaching. 
He taught, not as the scribes, but as one hav- 
ing authority. 

In what are generally known as the beati- 
tudes, he laid down in an official way, not 
the condition of salvation, but the terms of 
discipleship with him as members of his new 
society, showing that there is a progressive de- 
velopment in the religious life of believers. It 
begins in an humble and contrite spirit, just 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 49 

entering the kingdom of heaven and taking a 
seat at the feet of Jesus to learn of him ; as 
the disciple sees the exceeding sinfulness of sin, 
he mourns over his own sin, but is comforted 
in the assurance of pardon through unmerited 
mercy; as he realizes that his salvation is all 
of unmerited grace, he is made meek, and 
through the meekness of the disciples the 
church shall inherit the earth ; and the meek 
ones, conscious of personal impurity, hunger 
and thirst for righteousness ; and as they are 
filled with righteousness, obtaining mercy from 
God, they become merciful towards men; and 
as their hearts are thus purified in growing 
sanctification they see God in his holy justice 
while showing mercy to sinful men, and they 
become peacemakers between God and men, 
and between men and men, and are known 
among men as the children of God ; and as 
the children of God they endure and re- 
joice in the opposition and persecutions of 



50 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

this wicked world, knowing that they shall 
find their great reward in heaven, their final 
home. The Sermon on the Mount does not set 
forth a body of doctrines which men must be- 
lieve in order to salvation, but lays down and 
expounds the terms and fundamental principles 
on which the saved ones are organized into the 
kingdom of God on earth, and teaches them 
what, as saved ones, they are to believe, and 
how they are to live as the redeemed children 
of God on earth. 

And again, at the close of his earthly 
ministry, he gathered within doors the college 
of his disciples, those chosen to be his apostles, 
and with them he perfected the organization 
of the holy society, instituting the Holy Supper 
which is to be the perpetual bond of union be- 
tween its members; and, when thus separated 
from the world, he taught them the deeper 
mysteries of human salvation through his cruci- 
fixion on the cross, and promised to send them 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 51 

the Holy Spirit of truth to guide them into all 
truth, and to bring to their remembrance all 
things whatsoever he had taught them. 
Neither of these discourses was delivered to the 
world, setting forth doctrines which men must 
believe in order to their salvation; but 
both were delivered to his disciples as already 
acknowledged believers; and one of them was 
spoken in private, instructing them in doctrines 
and duties and giving them promises for their 
comfort in the toils and trials which would 
soon overtake them as they carried forward his 
work after his departure from the earth. In 
exact accordance with the view which we have 
just presented, is the last commandment which 
Jesus gave to his apostles on the moment of 
his ascension: "Qo ye therefore and make dis- 
ciples of all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all 
things whatsoever I have commanded yon; 



52 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the 
end of the world." They were first to preach 
the Gospel as he preached it, that is, to publish 
the good news of God's gracious provision for 
mercy to sinners on the simple condition of 
faith, and thus to make disciples; they were 
then to organize the disciples into churches by 
baptizing them in the name of the Holy 
Trinity ; and then they were to teach the dis- 
ciples, when thus organized for instruction, 
work and worship, all things whatsoever Jesus 
had commanded ; and doing this to the end of 
the world, Jesus would always be with them. 
This shows again that the Gospel is for the 
world, and theology is for the church. It is 
all well enough for the church to formulate its 
theology into a creed, provided it does not pre- 
sent its creed to the world as the object of that 
faith which is the Gospel condition of salvation. 
Faith unto salvation is not the assent of the 
mind to the truth of certain propositions, but 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 53 

is trust in a living Person, the God of love and 
mercy. And then it is not the faith itself that 
saves, but God in whom the faith reposes. 
The faith itself may be very feeble, but it is all 
sufficient provided it touches the living Person 
who is almighty to save. The Gospel of 
Christ is the power of God unto salvation to 
every one who belie veth. Faith touches his 
mercy through his only begotten Son, and sets 
in motion all his saving power. In Christ, in 
whom there is mercy for all sinners who be- 
lieve, there is virtue enough to save the whole 
world; but that virtue goeth out only to the 
touch of faith. To all those who touch him 
with the finger of faith, even though they come 
behind and touch but the hem of his garment, 
he saith, "Go in peace ; thy faith hath saved 
thee and made thee whole." The soul that 
sees its way in the light, or feels its way 
through the dark, shall be saved if it but 
touches with the tip of the finger of faith the 



54 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

living God, " who will have all men to be 
saved and to come to the knowledge of the 
truth." After being saved they are to be 
taught the truth that " There is but one God, 
and one mediator between God and man, the 
Man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom 
for all, to be testified in due time." This is 
the doctrine which Paul imparted to Timothy, 
enjoining him to teach it in all the churches. 

Misapprehension of important truths, and 
even misbelief in regard to them, do not 
always result in unbelief in the Gospel of the 
true God who alone can save. Even disbelief 
of much important truth may exist in the mind 
of one who trusts, in spite of his darkness and 
errors, in the living God who is the Saviour of 
all men. There may be much that is false or 
fanciful in the creed, and yet the heart may 
trust sincerely and savingly in the God of 
mercy who is back of the creed, and, perchance, 
obscured and almost concealed by it. A man 



THE GOSPEL CONDITION. 55 

is not saved by his theology, but by the living 
Theos, who may be grossly misconceived in his 
theology. If in the web of his theology there 
is woven a single thread of divine truth that 
leads the soul into contact with the living God, 
that thread is sufficient to bring the soul into 
touch with the God of mercy and to secure its 
eternal salvation. This does not mean that 
truth in theology is not important, or that error 
is not hurtful. Truth is the pabulum of the 
soul, and only the soul that feeds on the truth 
can thrive in strong and vigorous health. The 
spiritual life of one who has faith unto salva- 
tion will be strong or feeble in proportion to 
the amount of truth or error in his creed. 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN EELIGIONS. 



" Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, 
Who have faith in God and Nature, 
Who believe that in all ages 
Every human heart is human, 
That in even savage bosoms 
There are longings, yearnings, strivings, 
For the good they comprehend not, 
That the feeble hands and helpless, 
Groping blindly in the darkness, 
Touch God's right hand in that darkness, 
And are lifted up and strengthened, 
Listen — " 
to arguments that prove that the Gospel, making 
known the divine way of human salvation, is found 
in pagan creeds, and that it opens the door of salva- 
tion for the heathen world through Jesus Christ before 
even his name has been heard, because he is, as our 
orthodox Christianity teaches, "the propitiation, not 
for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole 
world." 



50 



CHAPTER III. 

THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

We have and hold the Bible as a divine 
revelation in which the Gospel, as the light of 
salvation, shines in the brightness of noon-day; 
but there are untold millions upon millions of 
our brother men who have not the light of our 
divine revelation, but are groping in heathen 
darkness. Have they no light of life glimmering 
in the darkness around them ? Have we no hope 
for their salvation ? Is there anything said in 
our divine revelation, or suggested to our en- 
lightened reason, on which we can rest a hope 
that they are not all lost in hopeless perdition ? 
What do our Scriptures teach concerning the 
fall and redemption of the human race, and as 
to the saving power of the Gospel in its rela- 

57 



58 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

tion to those who live and die beyond the pale 
of the Christian church ? In their light we 
must now consider the case of the heathen. 

The Bible teaches that man was created a 
holy being in the image of his Creator, and 
that he was placed on probation, with the alter- 
native of life or death before him, conditioned 
on his obedience or disobedience; and that the 
first man in his probation stood on trial not for 
himself only, but also for all his posterity that 
should descend from him in the line of natural 
generation. Our Scriptures also teach that 
man, in the hour of his temptation, fell and 
involved his whole race in his sin and its 
penalty. The Gospel, as we find it in our 
Bible, is the declaration of the good news that 
God has provided a way of mercy for the sal- 
vation of our fallen race through his only be- 
gotten Son, who came into our world and died 
for its redemption. And we are also taught 
that faith in Jesus — in that which Jesus has 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 59 

rendered possible, the divine provision for 
mercy to sinners — is the condition on which 
this salvation is offered to all men. " Whoso- 
ever believeth shall be saved." Man is again 
put on probation, not this time as a race, but 
each man for himself. The future and eternal 
destiny of each is suspended upon the free 
volition of his own will, receiving or rejecting 
the salvation now and here offered to him. 
" Whosoever will, may take of the water of life 
freely." All are invited, and all may come if 
they will; and no one that comes is ever 
rejected. 

Now the question arises, Does the require- 
ment of faith as the Gospel condition of sal- 
vation exclude infants who are incapable of 
exercising faith, and heathen who have never 
heard of the historical name of Jesus, from the 
salvation of mercy which God, in his wonderful 
love for our fallen world, has provided for sinful 
men ? These two classes constitute by far the 



60 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

overwhelming majority of the human race, and 
the question of their salvation or perdition in- 
volves both the justice and the mercy of God 
as the Creator of the universe, and as the moral 
Sovereign of all intelligent and responsible life. 
As to the first class, those incapable of con- 
scious faith or unbelief, we must believe, in the 
light of reason as illuminated by Scripture, that 
all dying in a state of infancy are saved 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. And by a 
state of infancy we mean that condition which 
incapacitates the mind for the conscious and 
free exercise of the volition of a responsible 
will. This incapacity may arise from the defi- 
ciency or defect of mental development, or from 
the invincible darkness of an external environ- 
ment. Eternal justice demands that this ex- 
ception should be imbedded in the provision of 
infinite mercy that offers Salvation to our race 
on the condition of faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ. The redemption of Jesus, if he is 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 61 

indeed the Saviour of our lost world, must be 
coextensive with the fall of man, and must put 
salvation within equal reach of every son and 
daughter of Adam's fallen race ; and it must be 
also as far-reaching and as all-embracing as the 
sin of man. As all in a state of infancy are 
the involuntary and unconscious heirs of man's 
sin, so, while in a state of infancy, they must 
be, in the same way and to the same measure, 
the heirs of redemption. On this point nothing 
more nor better can be said than what is ex- 
pressed in the quaint epitaph that was engraven 
on a tombstone over a grave in which three 
little children lie buried together : — 

Say, are they lost or saved ? 
If death's by sin, they sinned, for they lie here: 
If heaven's by works, in heaven they can't appear. 

Oh, Reason, how depraved! 
Kevere the sacred page, the knot's untied: 
They died, for Adam sinned; they live, for Jesus died. 

But what is to become of the heathen who 
never hear of Christ? Is there no help nor 



62 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

hope for them? Shall they all perish in the 
endless perdition of sin? The case of the 
heathen forces itself upon us, and clamors for 
solution. Let us first consider the answer 
given and defended by many able divines. 
They say, the revealed religion of Christianity 
is the only power of God for salvation, and 
that it can save only those who have it pre- 
sented to them in a formal way, and who re- 
ceive it by an act of conscious faith. This 
view of the case of the heathen, which calls 
itself the orthodox doctrine, consigns the whole 
pagan world, with the possible exception of 
the children, to hopeless and endless perdi- 
tion. This is a horrible doctrine, and the hu- 
man heart cannot tolerate the thought of it 
after the mind once realizes what it really 
means. It means that countless millions upon 
millions, hopelessly innumerable billions upon 
billions, of our brother men, are damned in 
endless and hopeless misery in a hell which 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 63 

they were never taught to shun, all for not 
believing on the historical name of Jesus of 
Nazareth of which they had never heard, most 
of them, even so much as a rumor. Can you 
look upon the countless billions upon billions 
of the non-Christian nations, and see them as 
one mighty, stupendous, never ending and ever 
increasing stream of living humanity, rushing 
on through darkness and plunging over a 
precipice which they never saw into a hell of 
which they never heard; and seeing all this, 
and hearing the wail of their unutterable and 
eternal misery, can you look up from all this 
unimaginable waste and wretchedness of hu- 
manity and pray, " Our Father which art in 
heaven, hallowed be thy name ; thy kingdom 
come, and thy will be done on earth as in 
heaven " ? No ! no ! ! no ! ! ! If there be no 
help nor salvation nor hope for all these his 
creatures, there can be no father's heart in the 
great God who made us, no love in his name, 



64 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

no justice in his kingdom, and no mercy in his 
will. If men really believed this horrible 
dogma, realizing what it means, it would drive 
them to madness; and, maddened by the hor- 
rible thought, they would, were it possible, rush 
upon the throne of Jehovah and tear it to 
pieces, and cast the broken fragments out of 
the universe. It would be better to fight 
under the banner of an ambitious Devil, than 
to kneel down and worship before the throne 
of an unmerciful God. But such is not our 
God, and such is not the law of his kingdom. 
Our God is the God of truth and righteousness, 
and his throne is a throne of spotless and un- 
questionable justice; and the sceptre in his 
right hand is the sceptre of love, and there is 
in his justice a fulness like the fulness of the 
worlds that fill the infinitude of space, and in 
his mercy a wideness like the wideness of 
illimitable space in which there is room for all 
worlds that are, and for all worlds that may 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 65 

yet be created. This God of justice has never 
made a creature with the design of damning it 
in a hell of misery; and the God of mercy can 
never doom his creature, however sinful and 
erring it may become, to a hell of hopeless 
wretchedness, unless he has first set before that 
creature a fair and honorable opportunity for 
pardon and salvation, and the creature has 
knowingly and wilfully rejected the divine 
overture of mercy. There must, therefore, be 
for the non-Christian nations a free offer of 
salvation, as well as for those to whom the 
Gospel is preached by the living voice that 
tells the story of Jesus and his love. 

To meet the case of the heathen, several 
theories have been proposed, but only a few 
of them are worthy of our serious consideration. 

One theory is grounded in the doctrine that 
man has no natural and inherent immortality, 
but that he becomes immortal only by and 
through faith in Jesus Christ, who redeems 



66 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

those who believe in him from death ; and con- 
sequently, all non-believers, in Christian and 
pagan lands alike, are annihilated in death. 
This theory does not relieve the question of 
infant and heathen damnation of any of its real 
difficulties. They are all eternally and hope- 
lessly lost. It only defines the condition of the 
lost to be a state of annihilation, of eternal un- 
consciousness. It is a remedy that does not 
cure and save the sufferer, but only kills the 
patient to put him out of his misery. To say 
the best of it, it is only the act of impotent 
mercy. It is only the coup de grace of an ex- 
ecutioner, breaking the legs of crucified human- 
ity that the unconsciousness of death might 
end the agony of existence. 

The theory of the future full and universal 
restoration of all lost souls, through the re- 
deeming process of remedial and purgatorial 
sufferings, does not throw any real light upon 
the dark question. A temporary hell is a real 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 67 

hell, and it does not relieve the injustice of 
God in affording some in this life the oppor- 
tunity of escape through a preached gospel 
while denying it to others. 

And last, there is the theory that has been 
advanced, and is now advocated by many pious 
and able men, that the non-Christian nations 
will have their probation in the life to come, 
when they shall have the gospel preached to 
them for their acceptance or rejection. This 
gives rise to another problem, harder to solve 
than the first. It would give the non-Christian 
naions a boundless advantage over those who 
have their probation in the present life. It 
leaves them free to enjoy on earth all the 
pleasures of sin, and then gives them in the 
future life a better and surer opportunity to ob- 
tain the joys of eternal salvation than the most 
favored on earth could possibly have. On this 
theory it would be a cruelty to send our creed 
to pagan nations. To meet this phase of the 



68 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

case some have advanced the suggestion that 
all unbelievers, those of Christian lands as well 
as those of pagan nations, will have a second 
probation under equally favorable circum- 
stances. But the condition of the two classes 
cannot be equalized. Those who have the Gos- 
pel in this life would necessarily enjoy a double 
opportunity to be saved, and would have, in 
their second opportunity, a double motive for 
accepting it, arising out of their own then mis- 
erable condition in comparison with the happi- 
ness of those who had received it when first of- 
fered to them. This theory, whichever way we 
turn it, involves a great injustice to one part or 
other of the human family. 

The Scriptures teach that the next thing in 
order after death is the judgment ; and as man 
can die but once, so he can be judged but once, 
and in the judgment he receives the recom- 
pense of the things done in the body. The 
Greek words, to, Sia tov a-co/xaros — the things 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 69 

done in the body — can only mean the doings 
of this mortal life. It is mere quibbling to try 
to force any other meaning into them. Death 
closes this bodily life and terminates the things 
done in the body; and in the judgment, which 
is next in order after death, man is adjudged to 
his eternal destiny. This leaves no room for a 
future probation. The offer of salvation, as the 
whole trend of the Scriptures teaches, is limited 
to this life. What man does here determines 
what he shall be hereafter forever. " He that 
believeth shall be saved." " He that believeth 
not shall be damned." This is the short and 
terrible alternative which the Bible sets before 
every man of the race. Between the believers 
and the unbelieving in the future life there is 
fixed an impassable gulf. The soul goes out 
from this mortal life to meet its endless and 
changeless destiny. It is just as reasonable to 
expect physical life on a post-mortem medica- 
tion as to hope for spiritual life on a post- 



70 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

mortem probation. The future destiny de- 
pends upon the faith that forms the character 
in this present life. 

We are thus driven back from all other 
theories, and cornered in the conclusion that 
the God of all mercies must present to the 
heathen in this present life an opportunity of 
being saved in some just and equitable way. 
That opportunity must be in some way through 
Jesus, his only begotten Son, in whom alone is 
the divine provision for mercy to sinners. 
Jesus is the embodiment of the mercy of God, 
and whosoever trusts in the mercy of God does, 
in that very trust, consciously or unconsciously, 
believe in Jesus ; and whosoever believeth in 
him shall not perish, but shall have everlasting 
life. 

We have seen that the faith that is the Gos- 
pel condition of salvation is not the mind's be- 
lief in the theology of the Gospel, but the soul's 
trust in the living Theos that is back of the 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 71 

Gospel. The creed is a body of which the Gos- 
pel is the soul; the body is of time and varies 
in thought and expression, but the soul is im- 
mortal and immutable. Man has made many 
systems of theology, but God has given only 
one Gospel — the divine provision for mercy to 
sinners. Hence, saith the apostle, " If any man 
sin, we [the human race] have an advocate 
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous ; 
and he is the propitiation for our sins ; and not 
for ours only, but also for the sins of the 
whole world." If Jesus Christ is the pro- 
pitiation for the sins of the whole world, then it 
must be possible for any sinner in the world to 
be saved through that propitiation. It is not 
necessary that the historical name of Jesus 
should be known as the invariable condition on 
which a soul can trust in the all-embracing 
mercy of God through his only begotten son, 
who has given himself a ransom for all, and as 
a propitiation of the sins of the whole world. 



72 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

A soul can be saved without knowing how his 
salvation has been made possible in the divine 
reconciliation of the grace of mercy with the 
law of justice. How few among Christians 
understand intellectually the deep mysteries of 
the divine plan of human salvation! Multi- 
tudes in Christian lands trust in the mercy of 
God and are saved without knowing, or being 
able to know, how mercy reaches them in con- 
sistency with the demands of justice. And 
likewise, multitudes in non-Christian lands 
may trust in the mercy of God and be saved 
through the propitiation of Jesus — a Saviour 
unknown to them by name. 

Amid the endless deities of pagan worship 
there is always an altar to the Unknown God ; 
or, the true God is worshipped under a name 
unknown among Christians. Paul found such 
an altar at Athens. He declared the Unknown 
God, whom the Athenians ignorantly wor- 
shipped, to be the true God, who made the 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 73 

heavens and the earth and all things therein. 
Their worship was the real worship of the 
true God, though they were ignorant of his 
name. He declared unto them that the One 
God, of whom they had caught the idea, has 
made of one blood all nations dwelling upon 
the face of the earth, and has thus constituted 
of the entire race one brotherhood, of which 
he, the Unknown God, is the universal Father. 
Of this grand truth some of their own poets 
had caught a glimpse; for one of them had 
said, " We are his offspring." In seizing upon 
the idea of the Fatherhood of God, the Greeks 
had found a God of paternal mercy,. and so had 
touched the soul of the Gospel. The living 
God, unknown by name in the Greek pantheon, 
had ordained that all nations should seek him, 
feeling after him through the dark, if haply 
they might touch him whom they could not see. 
He is not far from any man, for in him we all, 
pagans and Christians alike, live and move 



74 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

and have our being. Men exist in God spiritu- 
ally as they do physically in the all-envelop- 
ing atmosphere, and their souls are conscious of 
the presence of the spiritual element, in which 
they live, just as their bodies are sensible of the 
material element in which they exist. The 
body does not see, but always feels, the pres- 
ence of the air, and it would die if all air 
should be removed from it ; so the soul does 
not see, but always feels, the presence of God 
with it, and it would die if God should wholly 
withdraw his spirit from man. 

Paul tells us that men seek God by feeling 
for him in the darkness around them, and that, 
by feeling after God, they may touch him. 
God dwells not in temples made by the hands 
of men, and yet in temples he may be wor- 
shipped, as he was worshipped in the great 
temple at Jerusalem ; the Godhead is " not like 
unto gold, or silver or stone, graven by art and 
device of man," and yet in the " times of igno- 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 75 

ranee " God does not reject the worship that is 
offered to him through these instrumentalities 
as mediums of approach to his throne. No 
thinking pagan regards the idol before which 
he bows as the real God of his worship. Even 
in the most brutish and barbarous of the African 
tribes there is the idea of one Supreme Being, 
and even the most ignorant and degraded do 
not regard the fetich of their worship as their 
God, but only, as the converted African prince, 
Momolu Masaquoi, informed the people at 
Chicago, as the visible mediator between him 
and his unseen God, too holy and exalted for 
sinful man to approach except through the 
mediation of an intervening object or person. 
This is the explanation of nature worship, and 
of all forms of idolatry. Man, conscious of his 
sin, dares not approach the immaculate throne 
of the God of consuming holiness directly and 
in his own person, and so he seeks to draw 
nigh through the objects of nature, as the sun, 



76 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

the moon or stars, or fruit-bearing trees, tower- 
ing mountains or flowing rivers, or through the 
images of gold, iron, wood or stone, graven by 
his art and man's device. Thus, in idolatry 
itself, there is a dim shadow of a great Chris- 
tian truth, the need of a Mediator between God 
and man — of one who shall propitiate God 
and open the way for mercy to sinners. Thus 
at bottom, pagan men, in all the multitudes of 
their pagan gods, and in all the varied forms of 
idolatrous worship, are seeking, groping in 
darkness, for the Unknown God, who is before 
all, above all and beyond all, and whose foot- 
prints can be traced backwards and forwards 
through the mythologies of both the ancient 
and modern non-Christian lands. 

This Unknown God can be found, and has 
been found by those who feel after him through 
whatever darkness envelops their lives ; and 
when found as a God of mercy, however dim 
and grotesque the image of his mercy may be, 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 77 

he forgives and saves all who trust in his mercy 
for salvation. This salvation is not apart from 
the propitiation of Jesus, but is through 
that propitiation, dimly and distortedly appre- 
hended by the feelings of the heart rather than 
by the conceptions of the mind. The Gospel, 
in whatever creed of true or false theology it 
may be embodied, is the good news that God 
has found a way in which he can justly be 
merciful to sinners and save them out of the 
midst of their sins ; and whoever hears the 
sound, or fainest echo of this good news, how- 
ever it may be communicated, and accepts the 
mercy it offers, shall not perish, but shall 
have eternal life ; and this good news of 
mercy unto salvation has gone out, in the mys- 
terious impressions of God's spirit on the 
spirits of men, in advance, and far beyond, 
and far wider than the most distant range of 
the preached Gospel of formulated Christianity, 
bringing salvation to myriads who have never 



78 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

heard the historical name of Jesus of Nazareth. 
Thus the grace of God bringing salvation, hath 
appeared, in some form, to all men. Whoso- 
ever believeth, shall be saved. 

Sin has broken man's communion with God ; 
faith restores that communion ; that restoration 
is called salvation. In the fall, sin broke a 
link in the chain that held man in fellowship 
with his God ; the propitiation of Jesus re- 
places that broken link ; the chain again 
reaches unto man ; whosoever takes hold of this 
new link of mercy, thus believing, he is again 
enchained in reconciled fellowship with his 
God; he is saved. To change the figure: in 
the fall man slipped beyond the reach of God's 
right hand of justice ; and yet God so loved the 
world that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, 
but have everlasting life. God holds Jesus in 
his right hand of justice, and Jesus steps out 
between him and fallen man, and holds out his 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 79 

hand of love and mercy to the sinner, and who- 
soever, seeing this hand in the light, lays hold 
of it, or feeling for it in the dark, touches it, 
shall be saved. Faith unto salvation is the act 
of the human soul coming into touch with 
Jesus, or even with the hem of his outer gar- 
ment ; and in response to this touch there goes 
from Jesus virtue to save, even to those who do 
not know their Saviour by his historical name. 
In all this it is not implied that there are two 
ways of salvation, but that the one way of sal- 
vation is made known in different nations, and 
in different generations, in varying degrees of 
light ; and faith and action are required in pro- 
portion to the light that has been given. 
Where much has been given, much will be 
required ; and where little is given, less is 
demanded, and a very little will be sufficient. 
Whosoever calleth upon the name of the Lord 
shall be saved, by whatever name he may be 
addressed when the soul crieth unto him. 



80 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

The Gospel according to Jesus is in all creeds, 
whether pagan or Christian, that present, even 
in a dim and shadowy way, the element of 
divine mercy as the ground of human salva- 
tion. Whoever, conscious of his guilt, catches 
a glimpse of God's mercy, and prays, on what- 
ever hill he may stand, or in whatever temple 
he may bow down, even if kneeling before a 
grotesque idol, " God be merciful to me a sin- 
ner," shall go down to his house justified. 

While this does not mean that there are two 
ways of salvation, it does mean that God makes 
known the way of life to multitudes who have 
never yet heard the voice of a living mission- 
ary, and that the range of salvation, always 
through the propitiation of Jesus Christ, is 
much broader than the pale of organized 
Christianity, and that the voice of the Gospel 
has been proclaimed, in mysterious whispers to 
the souls of men, much farther than the theolo- 
gies and creeds of the visible church have been 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 81 

promulgated, and that, thus, millions of our 
brother men who have never heard of the arti- 
cles of our historical Christianity, are saved, 
and shall meet us amid angelic rejoicings in 
the paradise above, the Good Shepherd bearing 
them home to the flock of the redeemed, as 
lost sheep found in the wilderness of paganism, 
and rescued from the death of sin by his arm, 
almighty to save to the uttermost and from 
the uttermost. Thus millions who have never 
known the story of Eden and the fall, nor of 
Calvary and the redemption, feeling themselves 
to be sinners and that God must be merciful, 
have fallen into the arms of a merciful Saviour 
whose Gospel is preached, though darkfully and 
dolefully, in the creeds that never knew his 
name. 

The Spirit of Jesus was abroad in the 
world before the days of his incarnation, and it 
is to-day, as in all the generations past, far 
more widely spread than the missionaries have 



82 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

ever yet travelled. Since the day when the 
promise was spoken by the voice of God that 
was heard walking on the sin-smitten earth, 
" The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of 
the serpent," the spirit of Jesus has never left 
our world, but has been brooding over all 
nations as a saving influence, whispering of 
mercy and keeping alive a spark of hope in the 
deepest degradation and darkness of sin. 
Not all in the lands of churches shall be 
saved, nor shall all in the non-Christian nations 
be lost. Surely this was what our Saviour 
meant when he said, concerning the faith of the 
Roman centurion: " Verily, I say unto you, I 
have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. 
And I say unto you, that many shall come 
from the east and west, and shall sit down with 
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom 
of heaven. But children of the kingdom shall 
be cast out into outer darkness; there shall be 
weeping and gnashing of teeth." 



THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 83 

He forgets the infinitude of God's mercy who 
assumes that the plenitude of the creed of the 
Gospel implies the Gospel-emptiness of all other 
creeds. It is not a new Gospel that we preach; 
but we do preach that the old Gospel of God's 
mercy for sinners is so full and overflowing 
that its plenitude cannot be contained within 
the limits of any creed, but is found, as a life- 
giving element, in all creeds that hold out the 
hope of divine mercy to sinful men. We do not 
deny that the church is the visible kingdom of 
salvation on the earth, but we contend that 
there are divine and saving elements outside 
the church, even in the great pagan religions 
of the past and of the present day. 



A SAVIOUB THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 



" Christ is the light of the world, not of the Jew 
only, but of the Gentile also, of men in general. He 
is the source of all good thoughts among the heathen 
outside the pale of revelation. All good in man, all 
his holy thoughts and purposes and aims proceed from 
Christ, the light of the world — all these are rays, 
broken and fragmentary, of the Sun of Righteous- 
ness. The virtues of the heathen, their high moral 
attainments, are the effects of Christ's Spirit. So also 
the glimpses of truth embodied in their religions, and 
still more in the lofty theologies of the ancient world, 
are due to a partial illumination by the same Spirit. 
Socrates' divine monitor was the Spirit of Christ 
speaking to his soul. Many men were Christians be- 
fore the days of Christ; they were inspired by the 
Word — the Logos — before he became incarnate in 

Christ Jesus. 

The Biblical Woeld. 



84 



CHAPTER IV. 

A SAVIOUR THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 

The Lord said through the mouth of Haggai, 
the prophet, " I will shake the nations, and the 
Desire of all nations shall come." Many sup- 
pose that this passage, notwithstanding the 
verbal difficulties of the interpretation, was at 
once a prophecy of the coming of Jesus, and a 
divine declaration that his coming was not only 
expected by the Jews, but was also desired by 
all nations. The difficulty is grammatical — in 
the Hebrew the subject is plural and the verb 
is singular. The translation of the revised 
version is, " The desirable things of all nations 
shall come." It seems to me that the meaning 
is, "He shall come — the Desired of all 
nations," — the plural subject being used with 
the verb in the singular, because, while a 

85 



86 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

saviour was desired of all nations, he was de- 
sired in different nations under different names, 
and the coming of Jesus was the fulfilment 
of all these apparently different desires. 

But did all the nations, indeed, desire a saviour, 
and was the coming of Jesus not only the fulfil- 
ment of a Jewish prophecy, but also a divine 
response to a deep-felt need that was spread 
throughout all nations — a universal desire in the 
great heart of humanity? The answer to this 
question is to be gathered from the careful study 
of the ancient pagan religions; and that study 
has led the ablest and most learned investigators 
in that wide field of research to the conclusion, 
that there was in all forms of pre-Christian re- 
ligions, expressed or implied, a consciousness of 
human guilt and helplessness, producing a desire 
and an expectation that, sooner or later, a divine 
helper would come to men from the skies. The 
universal consciousness of guilt, and consequent 
need of a saviour, may not have been developed 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 87 

in all cases into the expectation of a personal 
saviour; but it never failed to give rise to a 
hope of salvation springing out of some divine 
provision for mercy to sinners. 

In many pagan nations this desire was fully 
expressed as a well defined hope of a personal 
saviour who would come from the skies to teach 
men the true way of life. About the time of 
the birth of Jesus there was a widespread ex- 
pectation not only among the Jewish people, 
but also in all the leading pagan nations, of the 
near approach and speedy appearance of a divine 
teacher and deliverer coming from God to men, 
to save them from the darkness of ignorance 
and the doom of guilt. This hope was clearly 
expressed by some of the great philosophers and 
poets of Greece and Rome, preeminently by 
Plato among the Greeks, and at a later day by 
Virgil among the Latins. The desire, grad- 
ually growing into a full-developed hope, has 
been traced back through all religions to the 



88 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 



most ancient. History shows that the tree of 
religion strikes its roots in the ground away 
back in Asia, hard by the cradle of the human 
race; and travelling towards us, they have been 
watered by the sacred streams of the Tigris, the 
Euphrates, the Nile and the Jordan; and going 
in the other direction, they have branched out 
into the various religions of India, China, Japan 
and the isles of the sea. Thus all religions 
have grown from the same root. The monu- 
ments and documents now show that Egypt re- 
ceived the seed of her religion from Babylonia, 
Greece from Egypt, and Rome from Greece. 
Jesus with his Gospel came down from heaven, 
and is the fulfillment and consummation of the 
religious aspirations of all lands, and of all 
hearts. His Gospel is not an evolution from all 
religions that antedate it, but a revelation, ful- 
filling the otherwise unattainable Desire of all 
nations. Groping in the dark nearly three 
thousand years before the advent of Jesus, the 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 89 

inhabitants of the valley of Mesopotamia felt 

the touch of an unseen hand, and the soul cried 

out: — 

O Lord, do not abandon thy servant; 

In the waters of the great storm, seize his hand! 

The sins which he hath committed, turn thou to 

righteousness. 
My transgressions are before me; may thy judgments 

give me life. 

This was the cry of penitential faith, and it 
doubtless reached the heart of the then unborn 
Jesus; and he seized hold of the hand and saved 
the soul. In this hymn, and there are many 
more of the same nature and tenor, there is con- 
fession of sin with prayer for mercy, showing 
both desire for and hope in a divine saviour. 

We come to Egypt and find Osiris, dearest to 
the hearts of all Egyptians. In their religious 
conception he was appointed to reign over the 
gods in the presence of the Supreme Lord on 
the day of the constitution of the world. He is 
Truth itself; he is Love. His heart is in all 



90 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

the wounds of his people. He is Lord of Life, 
Lord of Eternity, yet he was born of a 
human mother who called him by a beautiful 
name. " Osiris is thy name in the bosom of 
the Spirit; Goodness thy name in the bower of 
heaven; Lord of Life thy name among the liv- 
ing ; but thy true name is God." He was in 
heaven, and yet on earth ; had come, and was 
yet to come ; was found, and was yet to be 
sought. Surely in their Osiris the ancient 
Egyptians had a bright conception and a glori- 
ous anticipation of Jesus, who, in the fulness of 
time, appeared on the earth as the Messiah of 
the Jews and the Saviour of the world. This 
desire with its hope was fully developed among 
the Egyptians long centuries before Abraham 
sojourned among them, long before the children 
of Jacob went down to Egypt to dwell. 

Beginning in the far East and going farther 
east, and on eastward still, we find in all the 
great religions the idea and hope of a divine in- 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 91 

carnation, or rather of incarnations many, in- 
volving the desire of a saviour to come, or of a 
saviour that had come and was to come again. 
And as we trace in all the oriental religions the 
conception and desire of a saviour to come from 
heaven, we will fail to find any such con- 
nection, in a religious point of view, between 
the Jewish people and the pagan nations where 
this hope existed, as to lead to the inference, 
that the pagan expectation of a divine deliverer 
was suggested by the Jewish hope of a promised 
Messiah. The two ideas and expectations 
seem to have existed independently of each 
other. This universal hope of mankind may 
be rooted back in a Protevangelion which the 
race knew before its dispersion into different 
tribes and nations. Its presence in all creeds, 
pagan as well as Christian, indicates that there 
was a Protevangelion which is the root from 
which all religions have grown. 

The learned Augustus Neander, in his " Life 



92 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN BELIGIONS. 

of Jesus," says : " The Jews could not have 
caught their idea of the incarnation from the 
ancient myths of other religions, because the 
spirit of pagan mythology had not penetrated 
among them, and therefore cannot be assigned 
to explain the similarity between the Christian 
and pagan views. We must seek that explana- 
tion rather in the relations that subsist between 
mythical natural religion and historical revealed 
religion; between the idea, forming from the en- 
slaved consciousness which it sways, an untrue 
actualization, and the idea, grounded in truth, 
and developing itself therefrom into clear and 
free consciousness. 

" The truth which the religious sense can 
recognize at the bottom of these myths — myths 
of incarnation evidencing a widespread desire 
and expectation of a divine Saviour taking upon 
himself a human form — is the earnest desire, 
inseparable from man's spirit, for communion 
with God, for participation in the divine 



THE BE SIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 93 

nature as its true life; its anxious longing to 
pass the gulf which separates the God-derived 
soul from its original; its wish, even though 
unconscious, to secure that union with God 
which alone can renew human nature, and 
which Christianity shows us as a living reality. 
Nor can we be astonished at finding the facts of 
Christianity thus anticipated in poetic forms in 
the mythical elements of the old religions, when 
we remember that human nature itself, and all 
the forms of its development, as well as the 
whole course of human history, were intended 
by God to find their full accomplishment in 
Christ. 

"Not only dwellers about Bethlehem, but 
also men from a far-distant land, imbued with 
the longing desire of which we have spoken, 
•were led to the place where Jesus was born by 
a sign suited to their peculiar mode of life, a 
fact which foreshadowed that the hopes of 
heathen as well as of Jews, unconscious as well 



94 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

as conscious longings for a Saviour, were about 
to be gratified. 

" The natural development of the heathen 
mind worked in the same direction as the move- 
ments of revealed religion among the Jews, to 
prepare the way for Christ's appearance — 
which was the aim and end of all previous 
human history. There is something analogous 
to the law and prophets in the sporadic and de- 
tached revelations which, here and there among 
the heathen, arose from the divine conscious- 
ness implanted in humanity. As, under the 
Law, man's sense of its insufficiency to work 
out his justification was accompanied by the 
promise of One who should accomplish what the 
Law could never do, so, in the progress of the 
pagan mind under the law of nature, there arose 
a sense of the necessity of a new revelation from 
heaven, and a longing desire for a higher order 
of things. The notion of a Messiah, carried 
about by the Jews in their intercourse with dif- 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 95 



ferent nations, everywhere found a point of con- 
tact with the religious sense of men; and thus 
natural and revealed religion worked into each 
other, as well as separately, in preparing the 
way for the appearance of Jesus. 

"Thus it happened that a few sages in 
Arabia, or in some part of the Parthian king- 
dom, who inquired for the course of human 
events in that of the stars, became convinced 
that a certain constellation or star which they 
beheld was a token of the birth of the great 
King who was expected to arise in the east. It 
is not necessary to suppose that an actual mira- 
cle was wrought in this case; the course of nat- 
ural events under divine guidance was made to 
lead to Jesus, just as the general moral culture 
of the heathen, though under natural forms, was 
made to lead to the knowledge of a Saviour." 

We accept all this, and add to it two ac- 
cessory thoughts, not incompatible with it, but 
seeming to us to be necessary to account for the 



96 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

knowledge and hope of a Saviour which are 
found in the great pagan religions. The pagan 
hope of a Saviour from heaven was not in the 
ancient times, nor is it in these modern times, 
solely a product of natural religion, reasoned 
out from the deep, heartfelt need of humanity 
for such a Saviour. It was, and is, in part, the 
remembrance of a primeval revelation — the 
Protevangelion which was preached to all men 
up to the time of the dispersion of families. 
But we are very far from saying that the Gospel 
in pagan religions is wholly the residue of this 
inspired tradition. We go farther and say, that 
there is in the soul of every man a seed of re- 
ligion, and the human soul naturally turns to 
God as a plant turns to the sun. We go still 
farther and say, the inspiration of God's Spirit 
is not limited to those who live in the light of 
revealed religion, but is responsive to the seed 
of religion that is in every human soul, and dis- 
tils upon it its gentle dews and sheds upon it 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 97 

its benign rays, enabling it to germinate and 
fructify where it is not smothered to death in 
the lusts of a will turned to sensuality. Who 
will say that there were no inspired souls among 
the heathen ? 

We add the three things together, and con- 
clude that reason along the lines of natural re- 
ligion, the undying tradition of the Protevan- 
gelion given to the race at the beginning, and a 
divine inspiration responsive to the seed of re- 
ligion in the human soul, have kept alive in all 
the great religions of humanity a knowledge of 
salvation and a hope for a living Saviour to 
come from the skies; and hence we find in all 
religions a yearning, though it may be but 
vague, for all that is noblest in Christianity. 
The pagan world has never been left to itself. 
The merciful Father of all causes the rain of 
salvation to fall upon the pagan deserts of 
humanity as well as upon the more favored 
fields of Christian lands. Many fragrant flow- 



98 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

ers, though stunted in growth, bloom in the 
desert wastes of pagan nations as well as in the 
fertile fields of Christian lands through which 
streams of the water of life abundantly flow. 
All the virtues of paganism are not splendida 
vitia, and all their sublime institutions of moral 
and religious truth are not the mirage of the 
desert. There is the hope of a Saviour, and 
there is real spiritual life among them. Let us 
send them a clearer, even an unclouded Gospel, 
that they may have life more abundantly. 

And let us remember that the Gospel of 
Jesus is not primarily a teaching or a doctrine, 
though it embraces this. It is primarily the 
declaration of a great fact, offering salvation 
through a Person who stands alone in the his- 
tory of the world. That person is the Saviour 
who is dreamed of, and longed for, as the Desire 
of all nations. His ear of love is sensitive and 
can hear the feeblest cry in the most distant 
land; his eye of compassion is keen and can 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 99 

penetrate to the remotest corner of the darkest 
nation; his arm of salvation is long, as well 
as strong, and can reach the most distant and 
most degraded soul on earth that cries for 
mercy; and he stoops down and lifts up every 
soul that cries for mercy, even out of the deep- 
est sin into the highest holiness, even unto the 
spotless holiness of heaven where the forever 
sinless angels dwell. 

There is a point in which all religions meet, 
and from which, it seems, they all diverged. 
We find the analogy of what we now refer to 
in the unity and diversity of human language. 
Language is the expression of thought, and in 
thought all languages find their unity; and 
however diverse the languages may be, the 
thoughts expressed in one language can be 
translated into the words of all others. And, 
furthermore, all languages overlap and link 
into one another in certain vital root words. 
Just as man is a talking animal, so he is a re- 



100 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

ligious creature. Wherever we find man we 
find him with a language, if it be only a lan- 
guage of signs ; so, wherever we find man we 
find him with a religion, if it be only a religion 
of idols. The first manifestation of religion is 
the act of worship. Worship is the language of 
religion, and however diverse the forms of wor- 
ship may be, yet the forms of any worship may 
be translated into the expressions of all others. 
And also, all systems and forms overlap and in- 
terlink at their most vital points. We are 
happy in having the high authority of Prof. 
Max Miiller to sustaiu us in this view. He 
says : — 

" More surprising than the continuity in the 
growth of language is the continuity in the 
growth of religion. Of religion, as of lan- 
guage, it may be said that in it everything new 
is old, and everything old is new, and that 
there has been no entirely new religion since 
the beginning of the world. The elements and 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 101 

roots of religion were there, as far back as we 
can trace the history of man; the history of re- 
ligion, like the history of language, shows us 
throughout a succession of new combinations 
of the same radical elements. An intuition of 
God, a sense of human weakness and depen- 
dence, a belief in a divine government of the 
world, a distinction between good and evil, and 
a hope of a better life, — these are some of the 
radical elements of all religions. Though 
sometimes hidden, they rise again and again to 
the surface. Though frequently distorted, 
they tend again and again to recover their per- 
fect form. Unless they had formed a part of the 
original dowry of the human soul, religion it- 
self would have remained an impossibility, and 
the tongues of angels would have been to 
human ears but as sounding brass or a tinkling 
cymbal. If we once understand this clearly, 
the words of Saint Augustine, which have 
seemed startling to many of his admirers, be- 



102 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

come perfectly clear and intelligible, when he 
says, ' What is now called the Christian 
religion has existed among the ancients, and 
was not absent from the beginning of the 
human race to the time when Christ came in the 
flesh, from which time the true religion, which 
already existed, began to be called Christian- 
ity.' " 

This explains how and why we find in all 
ancient religions not merely a premonition, but 
a desire and an expectation of a divine Saviour 
from the skies. It was the Protevangelion con- 
tinued intuitively and traditionally in all the 
creeds of humanity, keeping alive in the diverg- 
ing families a knowledge of God and his prom- 
ise of a Saviour to redeem the world. In this 
we do not refer to the promise made to Abra- 
ham of a seed in whom all the families of the 
earth should be blessed. The Protevangelion — 
the Gospel that is found in all religions — ante- 



THE DESIRE OE ALL NATIONS. 103 

dates Abraham, and goes back to the primal 
pair from whom all the race has sprung. 

A careful reading of the Hebrew Scriptures 
shows that there was not a radical divergence 
in the religions prevalent in the East in the 
time of the patriarchs, but rather the reverse. 
Abram, when he sojourned in Egypt with his 
wife, found the fear of the Lord in the reigning 
Pharaoh ; and Abram recognized Melchizedek, 
king of Salem, as the "priest of the most high 
God," and united with him in worship, and re- 
ceived a blessing at his hands. Abraham, when 
at a later date he sojourned in Gerar, found the 
" fear of God " in Abimelech on the throne, to 
whom the God of heaven spoke in a dream. 
When, two hundred years later, Joseph was 
sold into Egypt, his creed was no obstacle in 
the way of his promotion, but rather a recom- 
mendation, as Pharaoh recognized him as "a 
man in whom the Spirit of God was "; nor did 
he find anything incompatible with his creed in 



104 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

the prevailing religion of Egypt, else he would 
not have taken " to wife Asenath, daughter of 
Potipherah, priest of On." And Jacob found 
no difficulty in blessing Pharoah, nor Pharoah 
in receiving the blessing of Jacob's God. And 
four hundred years later there seemed to be but 
slight difference between the religion of Moses 
and that of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest 
of Midian. They worshipped together, and 
Aaron, and all the elders of Israel, joined with 
Moses in holy communion with his father-in- 
law, eating bread with him " before God." And 
at a still later date we find that all fear of the 
God of Moses had not departed from the Moab- 
ites and Midianites, and that Balaam, the high 
priest of the people, was a priest of Jehovah, 
officially as true as steel, but personally as false 
as sin itself. And even as late as the day of 
David, we find that Hiram was as orthodox as 
David himself. And later still, did not Jonah 
find the fear of God on the throne of Nineveh, 



THE IDE SIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 105 

and did not all the people, from, the king on 
his throne to the beggar on his dunghill, keep a 
fast unto the Lord of heaven? Idolatry pre- 
vailed in those nations, but it was a ritualistic 
idolatry in worship of the true God. 

Mr. C. Loring Brace has made a thorough 
study of the ancient pagan religions, not merely 
to search for their defects, or to show their in- 
feriority to the highest religions, but to find 
what good there was in them; and to see how 
the men of other races and times regarded the 
problems of the universe and that great dark- 
ness that lies beyond the present life, and to 
discover what thoughts they had conceived of 
another world and of the beings there. In his 
great book, " The Unknown God," he sums up 
the result of his wide, scholarly and conscien- 
tious researches as follows: — 

"As we follow down in our thoughts the 
remarkable facts detailed in the preceding 
chapters we see a continuous revelation of great 



106 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

truths granted to various races and peoples, and 
transmitted by them to their descendants. In 
all religions we trace the idea of the Unknown 
God, as the original uncreated power of the 
universe, the source of all life, and the centre of 
all moral forces as well as material. His ever- 
lasting power and divinity are seen through the 
things that are made. He is not always 
4 Father,' but he is always beneficent and just ; 
and the hope of union with him and likeness to 
him is the inspiration of the soul. . . . 

" And there comes forth also among various 
races a hope and belief of a human manifesta- 
tion of the divine, of one who has, though of 
the gods, taken on himself the form of man, 
borne the sins and sorrows, and sought every- 
where to remove the evils of humanity. Some- 
times it is a tradition of one who had come in 
the past, sometimes the hope of one who was to 
come. If he has been in the world, his life has 
been full of blessings to mankind. He has, 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 107 

perhaps, been removed by a violent death, and 
now in the unseen life watches over his follow- 
ers, and becomes their Judge and Eternal 
Friend. Or, if he is to come, he will remove 
the fear of death, and will do away with human 
sin and suffering. Whether these beliefs are 
premonitions of certain great facts to appear in 
the world's history, or whether they represent 
the necessary mode in which the mind of man 
embodies its hopes and moral beliefs, it is diffi- 
cult to decide. They form at least an impor- 
tant part of the religious beliefs of the human 
race." 

We could quote much more from Mr. Brace's 
book with our entire approbation, but we do 
not agree with him in his theory as to how 
pagan nations came by their knowledge of one 
Supreme God. He says, " This — the concep- 
tion of one Supreme God — was not, of course, 
the primeval faith, but a growth from a con- 
ception of heaven as God, and then of the 



108 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

Heaven-God." But why may not the evolution 
have been downwards instead of upwards ; the 
original conception being of Heaven as the 
abode of God, and then of Heaven as God ; 
of the sun as the image of God, and then of the 
sun as God; of the various agencies of nature 
as the ministers of God, and then of them as 
inferior gods ? Both theories have their advo- 
cates. We adopt the latter ; and in our opinion 
the Unknown God is not the Unfound God, 
but the Forgotten God. Of course God re- 
vealed himself to primeval man in his creation. 
His creation was itself a revelation of the Crea- 
tor. How could it have been otherwise ? The 
primeval faith of the race was based upon a 
divine revelation of God to man. As families 
multiplied and dispersed, each carried with it a 
tradition of God as he hac 1 at the beginning re- 
vealed himself ; and false systems of religions 
are the products of degraded and confused 
ideas of a primeval revelation. 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 109 

However, we believe, as already stated, that 
God has planted a seed of religion in the 
human soul, and that this seed has, even in pa- 
gan lands, been quickened and developed from 
time to time, into higher conceptions of God 
and divine truth by special and personal inspi- 
ration of some who have arisen as teachers and 
reformers. There have been frequent fluctua- 
tions in religious thought and life both in pa- 
gan and Christian lands, sometimes rising to 
higher truths and sometimes falling away into 
false and fantastic conceptions of divine things. 
This fact is too well established in the history 
of both doctrine and practice in the Christian 
church to admit of doubt or cavil. There have 
been periods of decadence followed by periods 
of revival, and these again by periods of corrup- 
tion followed by periods of reformation. Similar 
fluctuations are traceable in the history of 
pagan religions. 

Sometimes, and among some, their hope for a 



110 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

coming Saviour, or their faith in a Saviour that 
had come, was bright; at other times, or among 
others, it was beclouded by prevalent sin or 
superstition, and was almost lost. But it 
was not, as M. Renan surmises ; speaking of 
the sorrows and aspirations of men, he says, 
" It is with their tears that they make for them- 
selves a saviour"; but rather, as M. De Pres- 
sense says, " With their tears all the nations are 
calling for a Deliverer." We add, despairing 
of help and blinded by their tears, some fall 
away into the abyss of atheism ; and others, de- 
spairing of human help, see the face of a mer- 
ciful Father shining upon the cloud of their 
sorrows, and forming upon the falling rain of 
their tears a bow of promise in which they rec- 
ognize the shining wheels of the chariot of a 
coming Saviour. The heathen world, desiring 
and seeking a Saviour, did not find him in any 
one of their Gods or priests, but they found out 
that they could not find him on earth. Were 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. Ill 

they all lost because they were baffled in their 
search? This does not follow by any means ; 
the Saviour found them. He still finds and 
saves all souls who, in the midst of heathen 
darkness, are feeling for the touch of his unseen 
hand, and are trusting in the mercy of the Un- 
known God for salvation through their lost and 
yet unfound Saviour. 

Jesus, the Saviour of our lost world, whom 
all the nations in all generations have been de- 
siring and seeking for without knowing his 
true name, did not come, when he appeared in 
our world, as the Son of man, born of man's 
sorrows and tears ; but as the Son of God he 
came down from heaven, where he was born of 
the love and mercy of the Father in the power 
of the Divine Spirit, before he was born into 
our humanity as the Son of man, the Brother of 
all men, while remaining forever the Son of 
God. And, holding God by the hand of his 
divinity, he lays hold of man by the hand of 



112 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

his humanity, and thus brings God and men to- 
gether in divine reconciliation and human sal- 
vation. Thus the Desire of all nations, proph- 
esied, consciously or unconsciously, in all 
sacrifices, however horrible in themselves, that 
were ever burnt on pagan altars, has come, 
bringing to mankind the salvation which men 
in all ages had been blindly seeking and striv- 
ing to find in their own vain inventions; the 
Saviour of the world, prophesied as the Messiah 
of the Jews in " all the blood of bulls and goats 
on Jewish altars slain," has come, bringing life 
and immortality to light for Jew and Gentile 
alike. " Salvation is of the Jews," but it is 
for all the world ; and whosoever calleth upon 
the name of God, by whatever name they may 
name him, shall be saved. 

And now, in conclusion, we must briefly 
consider the question, Do the modern forms of 
paganism so far as they have been examined, so 
far as they put themselves on exhibition in the 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 113 

Parliament of Religions, indicate a desire for a 
Saviour, either as belief in a Saviour who has 
already come, or hope for a divine Deliverer 
who is yet to come ? There is here almost no 
field of inquiry at all, because there are no 
modern forms of paganism. In point of date 
all great pagan religions stand related to Chris- 
tianity as Judaism does, and the coming of 
Jesus has influenced them very much as it has 
influenced Judaism. Many Jews accepted 
Jesus as their expected Messiah, but, in propor- 
tion, far more pagans in the first century ac- 
cepted him as the Saviour of the world. In the 
late centuries Jesus is far more acceptable to 
Jews than he was in the first Christian cen- 
turies. The liberal Jews of the present day re- 
gard him as a great and good man, and many 
of them are now beginning to look upon him as 
the greatest of the prophets. And, likewise, 
where his name is known, while yet his religion 
is not accepted, modern pagan teachers look 



114 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

with more and more favor upon Jesus of 
Nazareth. 

Where any changes can be traced in the 
modern forms of ancient heathen religions, there 
seems to be an increasing belief that the de- 
sired Saviour has come and has departed again; 
and with this belief there is the hope that he 
will return again and dwell among men, if not 
physically, at least as an ever abiding spiritual 
presence. Of all existing forms of ancient 
pagan religions Buddhism is at present, by far, 
the most widespread and the most vital ; and 
the world is now in possession of a complete 
form of a modern Buddhistic liturgy, composed 
in 1412 A.D. by a pious Chinese emperor. The 
great object of worship in this liturgy is Kwan- 
Yin, who is described as the Word of God and 
the Redeemer of the world, and one of its pray- 
ers is, " May Kwan-Yin, the omniscient and 
omnipotent Redeemer, now come among us and 
remove from us all impurities of thought, speech 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 115 

and action." So remarkable, in many points, 
is the resemblance of this modern Buddhistic 
liturgy to Christian forms of prayer and praise 
that many think that modern Buddhism was 
materially influenced in China by Nestorian 
Christianity in the sixth and seventh centuries. 
Of all the forms of religion represented in 
the Parliament of the religions of the World, 
only two have sprung into existence since the 
death of Jesus ; of these, one is Mohammedan- 
ism which is really a spurious form of Christian- 
ity that arose in the seventh century, and in it 
Jesus of Nazareth is recognized as the Saviour, 
and as a prophet second only to Mohammed 
himself; and the other is the Brahmo Somaj, 
founded about the beginning of the present 
century by Raja Ram Moham Rai, which is a 
conglomeration of Hinduism, Mohammedanism 
and Christianity, and which may be, upon the 
whole, regarded as a step from paganism tow- 
ards Christianity. Of this recent movement 



116 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

the best known leader was the late Kesub 
Chunder Sen who said in an address in England ; 
" I have not come to England as one who has 
yet to find Christ. When the Roman Catho- 
lics, the Protestants, Unitarians, Trinitarians, 
Broad Church, Low Church and High Church, 
all come around me and offer their respective 
Christs, I desire to say to one and all, Thank 
you ; I have my Christ within me; though an 
Indian, I can humbly say, Thank God that I 
have my Christ." 

All modern changes in the current pagan 
religions indicate a nearer approach to the great 
central truths of Christianity, and evidence a 
deeper consciousness of the need of a Redeemer, 
and a growing, instead of a diminishing, desire 
for a Saviour. From this it appears that now, 
as never before, a Saviour is the desire of all na- 
tions. The religion which promised a Saviour 
and which kept alive in the heart of all nations 
the desire for a Saviour, though latest born, was 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 117 

the first given of all religions. The Gospel of 
Jesus — the divine provision for mercy to sin- 
ners through the propitiation of a Saviour from 
the skies — has been known in the world from 
the fall of Adam. All nations, as families mul- 
tiplied and dispersed, carried this hope with 
them as a spark of saving power in all their 
false systems of worship. In many the spark 
of this hope was so bedimmed amid a cloud of 
false doctrines and superstitious ceremonies, 
that its presence can scarcely be traced; but in 
no nation was it ever utterly extinguished. 
Where it ceased to exist as a faith, it still 
lingered as a hope that kept alive in all nations 
the desire for a Saviour. 

In the fulness of time the Saviour, for whom 
all the nations were longing, came, and was 
born into the life of humanity as a Babe in 
Bethlehem of Judea; concerning whose birth 
into our world the angel of God said to the 
shepherds who were watching their flocks in 



118 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

the field by night, and through them to all men : 
" Fear not ; for behold, I bring you tidings of 
great joy, which shall be to all people. For 
unto you is born this day in the city of David 
a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." This 
Saviour desired of all nations, is " the hope of 
the gospel — the good news which ye have 
heard, and which," as St. Paul informs us, 
"was preached to every creature which is under 
heaven." And now, in the eloquent and glow- 
ing words of M. De Pressense. 

" The Deliverer is at length come ! He, for 
whom the old Chaldean was yearning, when, 
with terror-stricken conscience, he used the in- 
cantation of his seven demons, and, weeping for 
his sins, called upon a God whom he knew not. 
The Deliverer is come ! whom Egypt dimly 
foresaw when she spoke in words which she 
understood not, of a God who was wounded in 
all the wounds of his people. The Deliverer is 
Come ! for whom the Magi strained their eyes, 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 119 

looking for a Saviour greater than Zoroaster. 
The Deliverer is come ! for whom the India of 
the Vedas panted when she was lifted for a 
moment above her pantheism by the intuition of 
a Holy God — One who could satisfy the burn- 
ing thirst for pardon, which none of the springs 
of her own religion would avail to quench. The 
Deliverer is come ! the true Son of God, who 
alone can lead mankind to battle with full as- 
surance of victory ; the God whose image dimly 
discerned, had floated in fantastic incarnations 
through the waking dreams of the Brahmin. 
The Deliverer is come ! he who can have com- 
passion on the sufferer and on all who are deso- 
late and oppressed, without plunging himself 
and the whole world into the Buddhist sea of 
Nirvana. The Deliverer is come ! he whom 
Greece had prefigured at Delphi and at Eleusis 
— the God who saves because He also has suf- 
fered. The Deliverer is come ! he who was 



120 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

foretold and foreshadowed by the holy religion 
of Judea, which was designed to free from every 
impure element the universal aspiration of 
mankind." 

This Deliverer is Jesus of Nazareth, the Sa- 
viour of the world whom all the nations desire. 
Jesus, the Desire of all nations, has come, and 
he has been lifted up from the earth, and he is 
drawing all men unto himself. He forces none, 
but he draws all; and only those who resist 
and draw back, can ever be lost. Those 
who cannot find him he will find, however 
thick the darkness that blinds their eyes. Only 
those who hide in the light shall at the last be 
cast into the outer darkness where no ray of 
hope can ever shine. A man may go out of 
this life a pagan and find himself in Heaven a 
Christian, because Jesus was the real desire of 
his heart and the Saviour whom he was seeking 
in the pale light of his pagan worship, without 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 121 

knowing his historical name. To misspell, to 
mispronounce, or to misknow the true name of 
Jesus, does not destroy his power to save to the 
uttermost every soul who trusts in the mercy of 
God for pardon and salvation. 



THE CAUSE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



u Thou art Goodness itself in the abstract, in its 
first spring, in its supreme and universal form and 
spirit. We must believe Thee to be infinitely good; 
to be good without any measure or bound; to be good 
beyond all expression and conception of all creatures, 
or we must give over thinking of Tbee at all. All the 
goodness which is anywhere to be found scattered 
among the creatures is sent forth from Thee, the 
fountain, the sea of all goodness." 

Jer. WJiite, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. 

" Go ye therefore, make disciples of all the nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Eather, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe 
all things whatsoever I commanded you; and, lo! I 
am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." 

Jesus Christ. 



122 



CHAPTER V. 

THE CAUSE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 

In view of the conclusion reached in the fore- 
going chapters the questions arise : What be- 
comes of the cause of Christian missions to the 
heathen ? What work is there for our Chris- 
tian missionaries to do in the non-Christian 
nations ? These questions link together the 
motive and the end of Christian missions, and 
in our answer we will not separate them, but 
consider conjointly, and in the same paragraphs, 
the reasons which justify the cause of Christian 
missions in pagan lands, and the end which the 
work of Christian missionaries should aim to 
accomplish. 

If the heathen have the Gospel of Human 
salvation embodied in their various systems of 
religion, making it possible for them to be 



124 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

saved without knowing the historical name of 
Jesus of Nazareth, why should the Church send 
missionaries to teach them the doctrines of the 
Christian religion ? In answer to this we say 
— as we teach all through this work — there is 
but one way of salvation — the way opened by 
the propitiation of Jesus for the sins of the 
whole world in which is grounded and justified 
the divine provision for mercy to sinners ; and 
this, the only true way of life, is more 
truly and clearly made known in Christianity 
than in any other form of religion. We may go 
so far as to say that Christianity is the only 
true system of religion. All other forms, con- 
sidered as systems, are false religions. In the 
true system there are false doctrines, and in the 
false systems there is the true doctrine of sal- 
vation through divine mercy, more or less 
clearly expressed or implied. 

The Gospel as contained in Pagan creeds is 
undeveloped and very much darkened by a 



THE CA USE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 125 

cloud of false doctrines and superstitious cere- 
monies, but it is the Gospel, and has power to 
save the soul that lays hold of it. Gold is gold 
even when alloyed with base and worthless 
metals; and the gold is still gold even when 
in quantity it is a very minute portion of the 
alloys with which it is mixed. 

The system of Christianity exists in various 
forms. In the Church there are antagonistic 
denominations, and in each denomination there 
are schools of conflicting interpretations. Not 
many would be rash enough to claim that their 
form of Christianity is free from all errors. 
No one at this day can dare to limit the way 
of salvation to his own denomination or school 
of interpretation. Such narrow bigotry has had 
its day, and it kindled the fires of martyrdom, 
but the day for its tolerance has long ago 
passed away; Christianity now-a-days tolerates 
everything except intolerance. It tolerates 
heathenism itself, and rejoices to see the light 



126 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

of salvation dimly burning in all the false sys- 
tems of Pagan religions. But in the midst of 
this universal toleration of all forms of faith 
and unbelief, it is the duty of any one who 
believes that he has a higher and surer con- 
ception of truth than others, to promulgate and 
propagate his views. Truth can never be held 
as private property. It comes from God, and 
belongs to all men. It is the duty of every man 
to expose error where he sees it, especially hurt- 
ful error. All error is damaging. Error in re- 
ligion diminishes the usefulness and happiness 
of men, and some errors destroy both soul and 
body. 

And now, if Christianity is indeed a higher 
and purer system of religion, and more benefi- 
cent in its influence on humanity, than the 
best systems of paganism, then it is the duty 
of Christians to send it into all non-Christian 
nations, and show its superior light and power, 
and to offer its larger salvation to every tribe, 



THE CAUSE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 127 

family and individual of the race. But it must 
be offered as the better and surer way of life, 
and not as the sole way of salvation. It should 
not deny any truth it finds in the Pagan sys- 
tems, but should add to it its brighter light and 
thus not extinguish but increase the light that 
shines in darkness. Jesus came into our world 
not only that men might have life, but that 
they might have it more abundantly. Men 
may be saved through the mercy of God with- 
out knowing the historical name of their 
Saviour, but more men will be saved where the 
light of his Gospel clearly shines; and those 
saved will enjoy a larger salvation both in this 
life and in the life to come. 

Herein consists the real worth which justifies 
the cause of Christian missions ; and the work 
of Christian missionaries in Pagan lands should 
be shaped and directed by the frank admission 
of the fact, that the creed of Christianity is not 
the only, but the best, way of salvation. This 



128 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN BELIGIONS. 

is reason enough not only to justify Christian 
missions, but also to obligate the Church to 
send its missionaries into all heathen lands. 
Accordingly, Jesus commanded his apostles to 
" go and make disciples of all nations," and 
then to teach the disciples to " observe all 
things whatsoever he has commanded." They 
were not sent out to preach a creed of doctrines 
and precepts to the heathen, and demand faith 
in it as the condition of salvation. They were 
first to win the hearts of the people by preach- 
ing to them the gospel of divine love and 
mercy, and thus to gather disciples of Jesus in 
all nations; and then, to teach the disciples the 
doctrines and precepts of Christianity. Against 
this view the concluding verses of the Gospel 
according to Mark may be quoted; but all the 
world now knows that those verses, with their 
damnatory conditions, are not found in the 
ancient Greek manuscripts, but were added at 
a later date by some unauthorized hand. 



THE CAUSE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 129 

Under the great commission given the 
Church, as recorded by Matthew, the Gospel of 
Jesus as the only true system of religion, im- 
mensely superior and more beneficent than any 
other form of religion, is to be preached in all 
nations, that all men may have a better and 
surer chance of being saved ; but it is not to be 
preached as a creed that must be accepted as 
the only possible way of salvation. The doc- 
trines and precepts of the Gospel -creed are not 
to be thrust upon the world as the sole condi- 
tion of salvation, but are to be taught to the 
disciples of Jesus as the basis of Christian belief, 
and as the principles and rules of Christian life. 

Why do we continue to preach the Gospel in 
Christian lands to those who have already 
heard its glad news ? They have a chance of 
being saved without ever hearing another ser- 
mon. But it is our duty to increase their 
chance of salvation, and so we continue to 
preach to them after they have heard ; and after 



130 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

they accept the Gospel we continue to preach 
and to teach, in order that they may become bet- 
ter Christians, growing continually in the 
knowledge and grace of Jesus our Saviour. 

Even though the heathen groping in dark- 
ness may touch the hand of their unseen and 
unknown Saviour, and be saved without know, 
ing his liistorical name and without receiving 
the Gospel- creed, yet, every reason and every 
argument that justify and impel the Church to 
continue its work of home missions, also jus- 
tify and compel it to go forward with the 
work of Christian missions in non-Christian 
nations, with an ever-growing zeal and an 
ever-increasing activity. 

In the plenitude of the Gospel we have a 
larger Saviour and a larger salvation than the 
creeds of the Church usually present to the 
world. In the redemption of Jesus there is a 
salvation for this life as well as for the life to 
come, Godliness is profitable unto all things, 



THE CAUSE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 131 

having promise of the life that now is, and of 
that which is to come. We trust in the living 
God who is the Saviour of all men, specially of 
those that believe. In the very face of these 
plain declarations of the great missionary of 
the first century, the Church has limited its 
conception of salvation too much to the soul 
and to the future life. When we properly 
comprehend the length and breadth of the sal- 
vation taught by Jesus and illustrated by his 
works on earth, we will find that it is a salva- 
tion for the body as well as for the soul, for 
time as well as for eternity, and for nations as 
well as for individuals. While preaching his 
Gospel to the poor he healed the sick, fed the 
hungry, and relieved, in a general way, the 
temporal and physical maladies of men. 

The only serious rebuke that Christianity 
received at the hands of Paganism in the 
World's Parliament of Religions was for seem- 
ing to care more for the souls of the heathen 



132 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

than for their bodies. A few years ago a 
learned Chinaman passed through our country 
and stood up in our great cities at the centres 
of intelligence, and claimed a superiority for the 
religion of Confucius over that of Jesus, " be- 
cause," said he, " while Jesus taught men how 
to die, Confucius taught men how to live, 
holding that it is much more important that 
men should live right than that they should die 
well, and that right living is the only true road 
to well-being after death." Of course this is a 
gross misconception of the teaching of Jesus, 
but the Church is responsible for this misconcep- 
tion of the true aim of Christianity — a mis- 
conception which is widely spread at home and 
intensely felt in Pagan lands where Christian 
missions have their stations. The Christian 
missionary is very urgent to persuade the 
heathen to give up his idolatry and to accept 
Christianity in order that his soul might be 
saved in the life to come, but he fails to show 



THE CAUSE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 133 

him that the prevalence of Christianity makes 
bread more plentiful, health more certain, and 
the homes on earth more happy. 

It is held that the earthly benefits of Chris- 
tianity should not be urged as motives for ac- 
cepting it, because they are inferior to its 
heavenly rewards, and because they appeal to 
the selfish nature of men. But Jesus did not 
so teach; on the contrary, he appealed to the 
earthly benefits of his works as proof that he 
came from God. When John in prison sent 
two of his disciples to Jesus to ascertain 
whether or not he was the true Saviour of the 
world Jesus said to them, " Go and show John 
again those things which ye do hear and see ,* 
the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, 
the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead 
are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel 
preached to them." Here the physical benefits 
of Christianity are put first, and its spiritual 
benefits last. We are not to expect the mission- 



134 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGION S. 

aries of Jesus to relieve the physical sufferings 
of men by miracles as he did, but we are to ex- 
pect them to show in some practical way that 
Christianity has resources for the relief of the 
poverty and sufferings of this present life. 

The missionary station that has its physician 
and hospital, and its relief fund for pinching 
hunger, will make converts ten times more 
surely and swiftly than the station that has 
only eloquent preachers and pious teachers. 
The Gospel is to be preached in all the world 
not only to persuade men to live so that they 
will go to heaven when they die, but also to 
persuade and enable them to make the earth as 
much like heaven as possible while they are 
living on it. The end of the Gospel can be 
nothing less than the conversion of the whole 
world, and the Christianization of all nations. 
Jesus died not only to save souls, but also to 
redeem the earth from the dominion of sin. 

No Christian mission should be satisfied with 



THE CAUSE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 135 

making a few converts from year to year ; its 
aim should be to revolutionize society and to 
Christianize the nation. It should show that 
the salvation of the Gospel is for this life, as 
well as for the life to come, by applying all the 
resources and methods of modern science, as 
they have been developed in Christian lands, for 
the relief of the moral, social, sanitary and gov- 
ernmental degradations of non-Christian nations. 
To do this the missionaries should seize upon 
whatsoever threads of truth and of right princi- 
ples they find in the religious, social and 
national life of the people, and tie its new and 
higher truths upon those threads, and of the 
new and old threads weave a new web of a re- 
ligious, social and national life. In this way 
the missionaries can make " disciples of all 
nations," and the nations will be saved on earth 
and the men in heaven. God sent not his Son 
into the world to condemn the world, but that 
the world through him might be saved. 



136 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

Jesus came not to destroy, but to fulfil. 
The missionary should not destroy, nor even 
deny, the elements of truth and the dim lights 
of hope he finds in pagan religions, but should 
fill them up and complete them by adding and 
infusing into them the new life and light of 
Gospel truth. He goes forth as the apostle of 
Jesus, not to condemn, but to save the world by 
bearing witness of that Light which was the 
true Light, that is, the light of Truth, which 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 
The world, here spoken of, is not this material 
globe, but the world of men living on the 
earth — the world which God so loved that he 
gave his only begotten Son to live and die on 
earth for its redemption. Jesus was in this 
world before his incarnation, but the world did 
not know him. In him was life — life for the 
dead world before he was born into our life; 
and that life was the light of men. And that 
Light shine th in darkness — among men who 



THu CAUSE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 137 

do not know his name — and the darkness com- 
prehended it not; and yet, men's failure to 
comprehend it, did not destroy its power to save. 
And yet it is forever true that " salvation is of 
the Jews." The Gospel of Jesus is the only 
power of God to save men, and Jesus was a 
Jew. But that power is not limited within the 
confines of formulated and recognized historical 
Christianity. The power of God through Jesus 
unto salvation is felt, and is efficient, in far dis- 
tant regions where his historical name is not 
yet known, and, even in regions where his name 
is known, by some who have not yet received 
the creed of Christianity as excluding all other 
creeds. 

Certain friends of Christian missions are need- 
lessly alarmed at this wider and better hope 
for the heathen world which in late years is re- 
viving and spreading through Gospel lands, and 
taking possession of the minds and hearts* of 
earnest Christian souls. They call it a " new 



138 THE GOSPEL IN. PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

theology," and say that it is paralyzing the 
energies of the foreign missionary work. In 
the first place the doctrine is not new, and in 
the second place it does not paralyze the cause 
of foreign missions; but quickens and invigor- 
ates zeal and activity in sending Gospel mis- 
sionaries throughout the world. It demolishes 
the doctrine of a second probation, after death, 
and destroys the hope of a final restoration of 
the wicked after being purified in the fires of a 
purgatorial punishment. It lays upon the 
Church and all Christian people the awful re- 
sponsibility of hastening to send the Gospel 
throughout the world in order that all nations 
and tribes may have the largest opportunity of 
salvation, for both time and eternity, while 
mercy spares them in this fleeting life of their 
only probation. 

It is not a new Gospel nor a new doctrine 
tha£ we preach. It was openly avowed by some 
of the earliest Christian fathers, and is implied 



THE CA USE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 139 

in the writings of others. Justin Martyr tells 
us that Jesus was known in part to Socrates, he 
being enlightened by the Word (Apol. ii. 10). 
Augustine tells us that he was roused from sen- 
suality and ambition by " the incredible ardor " 
which was kindled in his mind by a passage in 
Cicero's Hortensius, which made him burn " to 
remount from earthly things to God " (Confess, 
iii. 7). He also affirmed that Christianity in its 
essence is as old as creation. Saint Paul, the 
great missionary of the first century, recognized 
beneath the superstition of heathenism a true 
seeking for God, and quoted with approval from 
heathen poets. He declares that a law had been 
given to the heathen as well as to the Jews, and 
that, when the Gentiles " do by nature the things 
contained in the law, they, having not the law, 
are a law unto themselves " (Rom. ii. 14). And 
Saint Peter, when he discovered in the vision 
which he saw on the housetop in Joppa, that in 
God's sight no man is common or unclean be- 



140 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN BELIGIONS. 

cause he is a heathen, was compelled by divine 
conviction to utter the great truth, " Of a truth, 
I perceive that God is no respecter of persons ; 
but, in every nation, he that feareth him and 
worketh righteousness is acceptable to him " 
(Acts x. 34, 35). 

This carries the wider and better hope for 
the Pagan nations back to the door of the prim- 
itive apostles themselves. The Church did not 
begin its missionary work until, by miracle and 
persecution, it was brought to recognize this 
great truth of divine love and human charity. 
It was the prevalent belief of the Church dur- 
ing the first great period of its widespread mis- 
sionary labors and glorious successes. With 
the revival in the present century of this wider 
and better hope for the Pagan nations, the 
energy and zeal of the Church in foreign mis- 
sionary work have revived and advanced with 
gigantic strides, and missionary work in non- 
Christian lands has been crowned with a sue- 



THE CAUSE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 141 

cess never known before in the history of the 
progress of Christianity. Where, then, is the 
paralyzing effect of this doctrine of broader 
charity and brighter hope upon the work of 
evangelizing the heathen nations of the earth ? 
On the contrary, the absence of this doctrine 
and hope is paralyzing on all efforts to send the 
Gospel to the non-Christian nations. During 
the long night of neglect and non-activity of 
the work of Christian missions, it was the prev- 
alent doctrine of the Church that the Pagan re- 
ligions were utterly powerless to save, or to 
shed one ray of hope on the teeming masses of 
non-Christian humanity ; and that the heathen 
nations were shut up in hopeless darkness, 
doomed to endless perdition, and that neither 
God nor man cared for the salvation of their 
souls. This was the prevalent doctrine in 
1789, when young William Carey proposed as 
a topic for Christian consideration, " The duty 
of Christians to attempt the spread of the Gos- 



142 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

pel among heathen nations." It is well known 
that the venerable Rev. Mr. Ryland denounced 
this proposition with a frown, and thundered 
out, " Young man, sit down ; when Qod pleases 
to convert the heathen he will do it without 
your aid or mine." And we are told, that 
" the aged and more influential ministers gener- 
ally" endeavored to dissuade Mr. Carey from 
what they deemed " so visionary a scheme." 
In the position of those " aged and more in- 
fluential ministers" there was a grim consist- 
ency. They held that it was not the pleasure 
of God to convert the heathen, but to leave 
them to live and die in heathen darkness, and 
then to damn them in hell forever for not be- 
lieving in the name of Jesus of which they 
never heard, no, not even so much as a rumor. 
So long as it was thought that God cared 
not for the heathen, it was not to be expected 
that men should feel any obligation resting 
upon them to send the Gospel to the non-Chris- 



THE CAUSE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 143 

tian nations. So long as it was held that it was 
not the pleasure of Crod to save heathen, a prop- 
osition to establish a foreign mission would, of 
course, be treated, as it was once treated by the 
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 
" not only as an unnatural, but a revolutionary 
design." When men began to care for the sal- 
vation of heathen they soon discovered that God 
had been caring for their salvation all the time, 
and that he had never left them in their deepest 
darkness without a witness of his presence 
among them. 

If there were no knowledge of the way of 
salvation among the heathen who have not 
heard the name of Jesus of Nazareth, if all who 
do not receive in formal faith the creed of 
Christianity are doomed to endless perdition, 
I do verily believe that the God of all mercies 
would have sent a knowledge of Jesus and his 
salvation into all lands long ages ago by mira- 
cle if it could not have been conveyed to them 



144 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

otherwise. If there were no way for men to be 
saved except by knowing the name and work 
of Jesus Christ, and if, for the want of this 
knowledge, men in Pagan lands have been 
perishing in hopeless darkness for thousands 
of years, I do verily believe that the God of 
love and righteousness would have, from the 
very beginning, sent out all the holy angels 
from heaven unto the earth to make known the 
way of salvation in all lands and in all lan- 
guages. If God Almighty could sit upon his 
omnipotent throne in heaven and see his chil- 
dren on earth perishing by millions upon mil- 
lions because no one had made known to them 
the only way of life, without exerting his al- 
mighty power to the utmost, even to the full 
extent of its miraculous force, to send to them 
a saving knowledge of the name of Jesus, how 
could we expect to see weak and imperfect men 
toiling and sacrificing to send Christianity to 
those who are their brother men only because 



THE CAUSE OE CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 145 

they are the children of the same God who 
made us all, and who is Father over all in 
heaven ? 

I know the answer to all this which, even to 
this day, some make, but with which none are 
satisfied. It is, that God is under no obligation 
to save any soul of Adam's fallen race; that he 
would be absolutely just and holy if he should 
leave all to perish in sin. Just he might be, 
but merciful he could not be; holy he might be, 
but his holiness would be as cold and lifeless as 
the eternal snow around the poles of the earth 
that is never soiled because there is no living 
vegetable or animal there, to tread upon it in 
life or to fall upon it in death. But God has 
sent into the world his only begotten Son, who 
is the propitiation for the sins of the whole 
world, showing that he has found a way in 
which he can be merciful to sinners. And if 
God is merciful at all, he must be as merciful 
as it is possible for mercy to be. If in mercy 



146 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 



he can save any sonl, he must in justice place 
the salvation of his mercy within the reach of 
all souls. This we believe the God of love and 
truth has always done, and is always doing. 
No soul can ever be lost forever, unless there 
was a time when it might have been saved. 
And accordingly, the great missionary apostle 
said that " the heathen who have not the law, 
are a law unto themselves." We are to send 
the Gospel to the heathen on the same principle 
that we would furnish glasses to the near- 
sighted — not that they are blind altogether, 
but that they might see better and farther. 

And besides, the great principle on which the 
cause of Christian missions should rest, the 
great motive that should prompt the Church to 
send its missionaries unto all Pagan lands, is not 
so much to save individual souls in heaven as 
to save human society on earth. If God loves 
the human race so much that he has made a 
provision of mercy for the salvation of men's 



THE CA USE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 147 

souls in heaven, should we not love our brother 
men enough to move us to send them our 
Christianity that they might enjoy all its physi- 
cal and temporal blessings on earth ? The chief 
end of Christian missions is to Christianize 
human society on earth. 

To this end God has made commerce his 
great missionary in this nineteenth century. 
Christianity civilizes men and nations as noth- 
ing else does or can; and increasing civilization 
creates new wants in the lives of men, and then 
sends out its commerce in ships and on its ever- 
extending iron roads — thus commerce is ever 
advancing, clearing new roads and opening new 
doors for the entrance and spread of Christian- 
ity. Commerce is the great unbaptized mis- 
sionary of this nineteenth century, and it is do- 
ing more for the Christianization of the Pagan 
nations than the great unbaptized emperor, 
Constantine the Great, ever did in that early 
century when Christianity converted the Roman 



148 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

Empire that claimed to be the whole civilized 
world. 

The cause and work of foreign missions are 
precisely the same as the cause and work of 
home missions. We do not send out evange- 
lists and establish churches and schools in the 
destitute regions of our own country simply 
that men's souls may be saved, but that human 
society may be elevated and purified by the 
infusion of the principles of Christianity in all 
families and in all communities throughout the 
entire nation. The aim of foreign missions is 
to do for the whole world just what home mis- 
sions are aiming to do for our own country — 
to Christianize society and government from 
bottom to top and from centre to circumference. 

The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness 
thereof ; the world, and they that dwell therein. 
The world is the field ; and the final result of 
preaching the Gospel is to be the conversion of 
the entire^ world unto Christianity. The end of 



THE (J A USE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 149 

foreign missions is the Chris tianization of the 
nations of the earth, and the end of home mis- 
sions is the evangelization of society in all hu- 
man institutions, whether domestic, social, com- 
mercial or political. And hence, the church, 
while preaching the Gospel unto all the world, 
is taught to pray, " Thy kingdom come : thy 
will be done on earth, as in heaven, " and the 
answer to this prayer is to be worked out by the 
faithful preaching of the Gospel in all lands and 
languages. While the Gospel, as God's word 
unto individual salvation, is whispered in all 
Pagan religions; yet the Gospel, as the power 
of God unto the Christianization of the nations, 
is preached in all its fulness only by the living 
ministry of the church. And therefore, as em- 
bracing both these truths, we conclude this dis- 
cussion in the words of Charles Wesley's hymn, 
praying for more ministers to preach the Gospel 
of Christ unto the ends of the world ; — 



150 THE GOSPEL IN PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

O Lord, send forth more men 

To preach thy word abroad: 
And let them speak thy word of power 

As workers with their God. 
Give the pure Gospel-word, 

The word of general grace; 
Then let them preach the. common Lord, 

The Saviour of our race. 
Oh, let them spread thy name: 

Their mission fully prove ; 
Thy universal grace proclaim, 

Thy all-redeeming love. 
On all mankind, forgiven, 

Empower them still to call, 
And tell each creature under heaven, 

ThatThou hast died for all. 



A Bundle of New Books. 



A Keuu Booh of Social thought. 



B.O. Flower 



The Social 
Factors at Work 
in the Ascent of 
Man 



Rev. 

Minot J. 

Savage 



A New World, a 
New God, a New 
Humanity 



The New Relig- 
ious Thinking 
deals only with 
Verities 



Just Published. 

Price, paper, 25 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 

The New Time : A Plea for the Union of 
the floral Forces for Practical Progress. 

This new work, by the author of "Civilization's In- 
ferno, 1 ' deals with practical methods for the reform of 
specific social evils. The writer does not bind together a 
mere bundle of social speculations, that would seem to 
many to have only a remote and abstract relevance to 
everyday life. He deals with facts within every one's 
knowledge. " The New Time " brings its matter di- 
rectly home to every man's bosom and business — follow- 
ing Bacon's prescription. 

It is published especially to meet the wants of those 
who wish to apply themselves to and interest their friends 
in the various branches of educational and social effort 
comprised in the platform of the National Union for Prac- 
tical Progress ; but, from its wide sweep of all the factors 
in the social problem, it will also serve to introduce many 
readers to a general consideration of the newer social 
thinking. 

Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 

The Irrepressible Conflict between 
Two World=Theories. 

Five lectures dealing with Christianity and evolutionary 
thought, to which is added " The Inevitable Surrender of 
Orthodoxy." By the famous Unitarian divine, advanced 
thinker and author of "Psychics: Facts and Theories." 
Mr. Savage stands in the van of the progress of moral, 
humane and rational ideas of human society and religion, 
which must be inextricably commingled in the new think- 
ing, and a stronger word for moral and intellectual free- 
dom has never been written than " The Irrepressible 
Conflict." We are now going through the greatest revo- 
lution of thought the world has ever seen. It means 
nothing less than a new universe, a new God, a new man, 
a new destiny. 

For sale by all newsdealers or sent postpaid by 

Areiia Publishing Co., Boston, Mass. 



A Bundle of New Books. 



riarion D. 

Shutter, 

D. D. 



Wit and Humor 
are sometimes 
confused with 
Buffoonery. 
They, however, 
are to be found in 
the highest works 
only, and they 
are subtly 
present in the 
highest 



Thomas 

Alexander 

Hyde 



Published only in cloth ; price, $1.50. 

Wit and Humor of the Bible. 

A literary study. Many writers have written instructive 
commentaries upon the pathos and sublimity of the Bible, 
but the literary elements comprised in the title of this 
interesting and revealing work have rarely been men- 
tioned. Dr. Shutter has here entered into a field which 
before was untraversed. This side of sacred literature has 
been long neglected, probably because in so many minds 
wit and humor are somehow associated with mere ribaldry 
and irreverence. This is a grave mistake. Wit and 
humor are too fine, and have their origin in emotions too 
human and ennobling, to serve the purposes of coarse and 
mean, degraded natures. In human nature, the sources 
of laughter and tears lie close together ; we need not, 
therefore, be surprised to find wit and humor in the Bible, 
in which every human passion is mirrored, in which the 
whole philosophy of life is to be found, with some con- 
solation and sympathy for every mood of humanity. This 
book of Dr. Shutter's is the work of one who loves and 
knows the Great Book thoroughly and reverently. 

Cloth. Price, post-paid, $-1.25. 

Christ the Orator : or, Never Han Spake 

Like This Man. 

This brilliant work, the only one of its kind which has 
been given to the world, is a monograph upon the third 
side of Christ's nature — the expressional. The Rev. 
Thomas Alexander Hyde, the author, is a vivid and vigor- 
ous thinker, and before the publication of this book, 
which has made his name as familiar in the religious world 
as that of any contemporary religious teacher, he had 
made a reputation as the author of " The Natural System 
of Elocution and Oratory." "Christ the Orator" has 
already awakened widespread interest, and received high 
endorsement from leading editors, preachers, scholars and 
thoughtful laymen everywhere, representing every phase 
of Christian thought. Its earnest spirit, sympathetic and 
finished style and lofty purpose, render it a welcome guest 
in every family. 

Mr. Hyde is a vivid writer and a vigorous thinker. His 
mind eviden'ly does not run in the old theological grooves, 
though we conclude that he is sufficiently conservative. His 
attempt to prove Christ an orator is at least unique. His book 
is suggestive, full of bright and beautiful sayings, and is quite 
worth a careful reading. — New York Herald. 

For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid by 

Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass. 



A Bundle of New Books. 



A Remarkable 
Volume showing 
the Identity of 
all Religions in 
the Creeds 



Rev. 
S. Weil 



Comfort and 
Hope from 
beyond the 
Bourne 



A Book for 
Sincere and 
Earnest Sceptics 



The Higher Life 
Here and Now 



Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.50. 

The World's Congress of Religions. 

To meet the general demand, the Arena Publishing 
Company has, with the consent of the Parliament Publish- 
ing Company, issued this popular work, which gives the 
proceedings of the opening and closing sessions of the 
council verbatim, thus giving the reader a perfect picture 
of one of the most unique spectacles man has ever wit- 
nessed — a picture in which the representatives of earth's 
great religions united in welcome greeting and loving fare- 
well. These two great gatherings are given verbatim, 
while in twenty-nine interesting chapters are given abso- 
lutely verbatim reports of the greatest and most represen- 
tative papers or addresses which were delivered — the 
papers which most clearly set forth the views, aims and 
mission of the great faiths, and which are immensely val- 
uable as contributions to the present literature of the 
world. It is important to remember that these addresses 
are in full and exactly as given. An impressive introduc- 
tion has been written for this volume by Rev. Minot J. 
Savage. 

Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 

The Religion of the Future. 

This is a work of great value, written by one of the 
keenest, most powerful and most truly religious minds of 
the day. It is particularly a work which should be put 
into the hands of those who have freed themselves from 
the dogmas of orthodoxy and from the dogmas of mate- 
rialistic science. It is a profoundly religious book. It 
demonstrates most indisputably to the unbiased mind the 
existence of a moral as well as a material cosmos. The 
book is addressed principally to sceptics who are seeking 
after truth. "The Religion of the Future" deals with 
that something lying behind the sympathy and interaction 
of mind and body at which natural science stops. It 
brings forward data to prove that this arbitrary invalidat- 
ing of modern science is itself invalid. 

This book starts with the axiom that the mental world 
is the realm of cause, of which the material world is the 
evanescent effect — that there is a " Power not ourselves 
which makes for righteousness." The chapters reveal a 
new method in psychic and spiritual research. 

For sale by all newsdealers or sent postpaid by 

Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass. 



From the press of the Arena Publishing Company. 



Ihe Latest Social Uision. 



Byron A. 
Brooks 



Richmond, Va. 
Star 

Chicago Times 

Review of 
Reviews 



Lyman Abbott's 
Paper, The 
Outlook 



Nashville, Tenn. 
Banner 



Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 



EARTH REVISITED. 

The New Utopia, " Earth Revisited, 1 ' is the latest social 
vision, and in many respects the most charming work 
of this character which has ever appeared. In it we see 
the people, the state and the church under true civilization, 
and the new psychology is introduced in such a manner 
as to interest students of psychical research. 

Here are a few press opinions : — 

" As a story, it is very interesting." 

" Worthy of consideration for its study of the social and other 
questions involved." 

" The story is written in an autobiographical form and pic- 
tures the social, industrial, religious and educational America of 
1992. As a work of fiction the volume embodies in a fanciful 
way a view expressed in the closing words : • To live is to love 
and to labor. There is no death.' The style is clear and direct." 

" Mr. Brooks is an earnest man. He has written a religio- 
philosophical novel of life in the coming century. The hero of 
this story has lived the life of the average man and at length, 
when he finds himself dying, he wishes that he might have a 
chance to live his life over. The wish is granted and he is born 
again on the earth a century later. Social and scientific and 
religious evolution have in a hundred years contrived to make an 
almost irrecognizable world of it. Human nature is changed ; 
altruism is fully realized; worship has become service of man; 
the struggle for wealth and social rank has ended. Mr. Brooks' 
book is worth reading by all sincere people, and in particular 
by those interested in Christian socialism and applied Christian- 
ity." 

" If you should happen to pick up Byron A. Brooks' ' Earth 
Revisited ' and read the first chapter, the chances are that you 
would follow the story on to the end, even if you had other 
things on hand spoiling for your attention. Summed up, 
' Earth Revisited ' is a wild though delightful story, short 
enough to be filled from end to end with throbbing interest and 
long enough to fully round off the things that are introduced." 



For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid by 

Arena Publishing Co., Bosto?i, Mass. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservationTechnologie* 



